BILL KNIGHT

In late November, a federal jury in Illinois ordered $17.7 million in damages to be awarded to four big food corporations that sued four major egg producers over a conspiracy to limit the U.S. egg supply and artificially raise prices during the 2000s.

In an era when legal precedents are as stable as tumbleweeds and courts like rodeos inside the OK Corral, civil suits about big business can seem like the Wild West.

Pitting giant food-distribution conglomerates against huge egg producers that control most of the market is like railroad titans taking on cattle barons. Where do everyday consumers fit in?

Indeed, as The Community Word reported in March, claims of price-fixing in eggs has continued. But maybe this verdict will get the attention of business and government.

First, under federal antitrust law, the damages are tripled, bringing the total penalty to more than $53 million. Also, government enforcement against monopolistic practices has been practically worthless, like 19th century lawmen without the will or weapon to do their job, leaving virtual vigilantes of lawyers and juries to impose law and order.

This case, first filed in 2011, involved business behemoths General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft and Nestle suing lesser-known but powerful egg-industry titans Cal-Maine Foods, Rose Acre Farms, United Egg Producers, Inc., and United States Egg Marketers, Inc. for conspiring to increase egg prices, and the jury unanimously agreed days before Thanksgiving.

“We are incredibly pleased by the jury’s decision to hold [these] egg producers accountable for conspiring to inflate the price of eggs,” Brandon Fox, an attorney representing the food manufacturers, said to the Associated Press. “For the first time, the defendants have been held liable for their antitrust violations.”

That’s fine. But jurors were instructed to not consider more recent egg pricing during deliberations. So alleged market manipulation in the last year or so was unexamined, much less unpunished.

And some of us egg lovers think a posse rounding up lawbreakers is warranted.

After all, the average price for a dozen eggs increased from $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, provoking ag advocacy group Farm Action to dispute business excuses and to ask the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene.

“The real culprit behind this 138% hike in the price of a carton of eggs appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40%,” Farm Action said.

If there’s banditry, there ought to be consequences, no matter how influential the supposed outlaws may be.

For example, Rose Acre Farms, one of the losing defendants, is the second-largest egg producer in the country, behind only Cal-Maine. Its former chair, John Rust, is a Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Indiana.

It shouldn’t matter to the FTC, much less to shoppers, small grocers or farm advocates and their attorneys.

Saddle up, counsel!