Island Harvest benefits from price-fixing settlement, gets 11,700 cartons of eggs to distribute

Island Harvest Food Bank has received 11,700 cartons of eggs — 140,400 eggs in all — as part of a settlement following a bipartisan, multistate investigation into price manipulation by three major national egg suppliers.

Food banks nationwide will receive 53 million eggs, including nearly 5 million eggs delivered to agencies in New York. That is a result of the settlement, which found the three distributors — Cal-Maine Foods, Versova/Centrum and Hickman’s Egg Ranch — coordinated bidding strategies to influence and manipulate daily egg prices and had been doing so since at least 2022.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, state Attorney General Letitia James' office said the trio of companies submitted "sham bids" at "artificially inflated prices" in order to distort the market, then withdrew the bids — all in an effort to raise what are known as the Urner Barry price quotes.

Urner Barry is a "benchmark pricing service" that provides a daily egg price index used by the egg supply industry.

The investigation followed a joint filing by officials in New York and 16 other states and revealed an email from December 2022 from the CEO of Hickman’s to executives at Versova/Centrum and Cal-Maine, "urging them," according to the attorney general's office, to submit what the office quoted as "strong bids, early and often" in order to push egg prices higher.

That collusion and coordination not only impacted prices but caused undue financial burden for egg buyers and consumers, James said.

In addition to the eggs to be distributed, the three companies will pay a combined $3.3 million in restitution, the attorney general’s office said.

Officials said Island Harvest and food banks in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Westchester and along the Southern Tier have all received egg deliveries as part of the settlement.

"Eggs are a highly nutritious, versatile, and wholesome food item that is frequently requested by the people we serve," Island Harvest CEO Randi Shubin Dresner said in a statement on Wednesday.

While thanking James for "negotiating this settlement in such a thoughtful way," Dresner said Island Harvest would distribute the eggs in Nassau and Suffolk through its network of food pantries, as well as through its emergency feeding programs.

In Wednesday's statement, James said: "Families throughout New York count on eggs for an affordable and balanced diet. After investigating the corporations behind an illegal effort to inflate egg prices, my office is helping to deliver millions of eggs to food banks across the state. I thank Island Harvest for their work to deliver these eggs to Long Island families."

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a Newsday reporter since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press, Society of the Silurians and National Headliner Awards for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing. He is the author of “Swee'pea,” about New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. His debut crime novel, “For Nothing Is Hidden,” rooted in 1950s Long Island, was released in October 2025.