By Patrick Thomas | Photographs by Emily Kask for WSJ
EDWARDS, Miss.—About 30 miles outside of Jackson, Miss., employees at a secretive and little-known company recently gathered in the break room to watch a TikTok video. It lambasted their employer, Cal-Maine CALM 0.55%increase; green up pointing triangle Foods, which is being blamed for a massive frustration in America: the high price of eggs.
Eggs are the most visible symbol of the toll that inflation is taking on U.S. consumers, and no one sells more of them than Cal-Maine.
Its 50 million hens produce roughly one out of every five eggs sold in the U.S. As egg prices have tripled in three years during a nationwide bird-flu epidemic, its stock has doubled. That makes it public enemy No. 1 for lawmakers and regulators trying to restrain the forces of food inflation. The Justice Department kicked off an investigation in March into the nationwide increase in the cost of eggs and is probing Cal-Maine’s and other companies’ pricing practices.
The 60 employees at Cal-Maine’s corporate headquarters work out of a second-floor office in a small complex, wedged between an insurer and an accounting firm. The longtime family-controlled company likes to keep a low profile and doesn’t hold quarterly earnings calls with investors, unlike most publicly traded companies.
But Chief Executive Sherman Miller says he can’t ignore the rising animosity, and he’s ready to set the record straight.
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