Charlotte food bank receives 270,000 eggs as part of NC Attorney General’s settlement with producers

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson (D) announced Tuesday that a Charlotte food bank received 270,000 eggs as part of his antitrust settlement with three of the country’s largest egg producers.

Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina in Charlotte accepted the donation, after food banks in Raleigh and Winston-Salem received eggs last month.

Five more deliveries are planned across the state for this month, with North Carolina food banks set to receive nearly 3 million eggs in total, according to Jackson’s office .

The donations are the result of the settlement Jackson, 16 other state attorneys general of both parties and the Justice Department (DOJ) reached in June with egg producers Cal-Maine, Hickman’s Family Farms and Versova.

The joint lawsuit alleged the three companies violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by sharing information and coordinating their bidding on eggs from 2022 to 2025.

By doing so, the companies manipulated industry benchmark prices and artificially raised the cost of eggs, the attorneys general and DOJ claimed.

“When companies break the law and drive-up costs, we’re going to hold them accountable,” Jackson said Tuesday in a release. “This settlement provides food banks with millions of eggs for North Carolina families who need them most, and makes sure that these companies can’t work together to illegally raise egg prices again.”

Kay Carrer, the CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, said the donated eggs “will directly benefit our food insecure neighbors” across North Carolina.

“Fresh protein is the most requested item, and these eggs directly support our mission to ‘feed more people better food’ in the communities we serve,” Carter said in the release from Jackson’s office.

The average price of a dozen of grade A eggs in the U.S. increased from $1.93 in January 2022 to a 20-year peak of $6.23 in March 2025, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

General inflation and the impact of bird flu on the chicken supply contributed to the increase in egg prices. Egg prices have since fallen to $2.19 per dozen as of July, per the BLS.

As part of the settlement with the DOJ and 17 attorneys general, Cal-Maine, Hickman’s Family Farms and Versova had to donate more than 50 million eggs to food banks across the country, end their coordination to manipulate price benchmarks, adopt compliance measures and cooperate with state-level oversight.