The clock is ticking on legislation in Congress designed to help level the playing field for cattle producers in a market many of them say is broken.
The House recently passed the Lower Food and Fuels Cost Act which includes a special USDA investigator to help look into possible violations of the Packers and Stockyards Act and whether producers are being treated unfairly. However, there’s divide on if this is the right approach to restoring competition in the cattle market.
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack says they need more cattle market information regarding cash trades, to ensure fairness in the market, as well as greater enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act. He thinks the addition of this position may well help USDA accomplish that goal. “One way is by supporting the notion of having an investigative arm, if you will. The other way is to to bolster the staffing at Packers and Stockyards, which the president’s budget includes. So a combination of those two things would strengthen our ability. At the meantime, we’re going to try to strengthen the Packers and Stockyards Act to make sure that when and if we have to enforce it, that we’re that there’s clarity about what is and what isn’t appropriate and permissible under the Packers and Stockyards Act.”
However, NCBA is opposed to this legislation and adding a special investigator at USDA saying the agency already has a Packers and Stockyard division, they are just understaffed and underfunded by nearly 50%.
NCBA VP of Government Affairs, Ethan Lane, says, “And when you talk to those Packers and Stockyards employees what they tell us is that they have the authorities they need, they have the ability to subpoena, they have that prosecutorial authority when needed working with their partners at DOJ, what they don’t have is staff.”
Lane says adding personnel and resources would go much farther than creating another government agency that will cloud the issue. And they look at this bill as a solution in search of a problem.
However, he says time may simply run out to advance either the Special Investigator bill and the even more controversial Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act. The summer session will end in the next few weeks and it is unlikely to be taken up in a lame duck session of Congress.
