SALT LAKE CITY — It'll be omelettes for everyone from Logan to St. George as Utah is set to receive more than 1.5 million eggs as part of a price-fixing lawsuit settlement.
The eggs will be arriving "by the truckload" Monday at the Utah Food Bank, according to the Utah Attorney General's office, and will be distributed to partner programs across the state.
The egg inundation comes after Utah and 16 other states, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, agreed to a settlement this summer with three egg producers accused of colluding to raise prices.
Egg producers will pay $3.3M and donate 53 million eggs to settle price-fixing claims:
According to the Utah Attorney General's Office, the three companies coordinated efforts to inflate daily price quotas for eggs and traded pricing plans and strategies instead of competing against one another.
"Utah families paid more than they should have for eggs, all because a few companies decided to cheat rather than compete," said Attorney General Derek Brown.
In addition to the massive egg donations, the three companies in the settlement, Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., Versova Holdings, and Hickman's Family Farms, are prohibited from communicating about a variety of pricing issues for five years.