An Arizona-based egg producer is among three companies that were fined $1 million and forced to donate more than 3 million eggs as part of a collusion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department.

Producers blamed avian flu, but corporate watchdogs with Farm Action say the numbers don't back that up.

Hickman's Egg Ranch, based in Buckeye, Arizona, along with Cal-Maine and Versova Holdings, were charged with artificially inflating egg prices between 2022 and 2025.

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Farm Action President Angela Huffman said the companies routinely shared pricing strategies and manipulated a key egg pricing benchmark.

"The settlement that was agreed to is very small compared to the profits that these companies made. These companies then can just treat them as a cost of doing business," Huffman said.

Commercial poultry farms have also come under scrutiny for violating federal health safety standards in confinements where thousands of egg-laying chickens are raised in unsanitary conditions.

Commercial operations have countered that their products do not pose health threats because cooking poultry eliminates the threat of salmonella and other contaminants.

Huffman said the Trump administration also diverted $1 billion away from local farmers to the ag industry for avian flu testing, but federal data show the incidence of avian flu did not support the egg price hikes.

Huffman added that taxpayers and consumers paid the price for collusion by an industry that was ultimately found guilty.

"We documented that a Cal-Maine contract farmer was paid just 26 cents a dozen, while Cal-Maine charged $8 to $10 per dozen. Consumers paid record prices. That money wasn't going to the farmers raising the eggs. It was accumulating at the corporate level," Huffman said.

During the three-year period of artificially inflated egg prices, Cal-Maine reported profits of more than $1.2 billion.