The Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act passed in the House last week and includes a plan to establish a USDA office to prosecute anticompetitive practices in food and agriculture.
Various lawmakers and farm groups were quick to criticize the language in the bill that would create a Special Investigator’s office inside USDA to investigate meat and poultry competition issues.
House Ag Committee Ranking member Representative G.T. Thompson called Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act quote “more cops for cows”. He thinks the bill is an attempt to score political points by blaming meatpackers for inflation but will have to immediate effect on prices.
Many livestock groups on the Hill agreed with Thompson including the National Pork Producers Council, North American Meat Institute and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. They say the bill creates a position to look at anticompetitive matters. However, that duplicates the work of numerous federal investigative agencies, including DOJ, the FBI and USDA’s Packers and Stockyards division who have existing authority, staff and budget to investigate anticompetitive actions.
The groups add this bill is underfunded by nearly 40%, which will divert critical resources away from the Agriculture Marketing Service of USDA at the expense of other critical programs like market data reporting.
Ethan Lane, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs says, “So its really sort of missing the mark to not address the understaffing the agency already charged with oversight of a Packers and Stockyards Act and instead create this new sort of super impowered investigative branch strictly focused on meat and poultry competition issues. You know we know that P&S last year had about 2100 cases they worked on and less than 1% of those were competition focused issues so this seems like more of a kind of messaging play than it does an attempt to really address the issues at hand and that’s why we’re opposed to the bill.”
Lane adds that rising food, fuel and fertilizer prices are hurting cattle producers around the country and Congress is wasting time with legislative proposals in search of a problem, while ignoring real issues impacting agriculture.
The legislation now goes to the Senate for consideration. Farm Journal Analyst Jim Wiesemeyer predicts the Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act containing the special investigator section won’t have enough support in the Senate to reach 60 votes needed for passage.
