Source: CommonDreams.org
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders this weekend renewed his call to break up agricultural monopolies after the nation’s largest egg producer reported that its quarterly profits soared more than 700%.
Cal-Maine Foods, which controls about 20% of the U.S. egg market, announced last week that its revenue for the quarter ending February 25 rose 109% to $997.5 million, while profit for the same period skyrocketed 718% to $323.2 million.
In a statement, Cal-Maine president and CEO Sherman Miller attributed the company’s soaring profits to “the ongoing epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza which has significantly reduced the nation’s egg-laying capacity.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of the year,” while “more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to the disease itself or to depopulation since the outbreak began in February 2022.”
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who took on agricultural monopolies while campaigning for president in 2016 and 2020—questioned Cal-Maine’s narrative in a tweet arguing that “we must break up Big Ag and enact a windfall profits tax.”
Sanders wasn’t the only congressional critic of Cal-Maine’s latest profits.
“While working families paid record prices for eggs, Cal-Maine raked over 700% more in profits—without reporting a single case of avian flu,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted on Thursday. “We need to crack down on corporate price gouging to provide Americans with relief at the grocery store.”…