By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc. (NCBA) is taking issue with another livestock group’s affiliation with Food and Water Watch (FWW), an environmental group.

The issue at hand is the USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration’s (GIPSA) proposed livestock rule. The NCBA is lobbying heavily against the proposal, which seeks to place more power in the hands of livestock producers, who GIPSA says are too much under the thumb of the meatpackers.

“(FWW) seems to fly under the radar, compared to other groups like the Humane Society of the United States, which is larger and more vocal,” said NCBA President Steven Foglesong. The livestock group is the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF).

“As a cattle producer, it is concerning that an organization in my industry is admittedly partnering with a group that spreads fiction as fact to 98 percent of the population removed from production agriculture,” Foglesong said. “This industry can disagree – that’s how progress is achieved – but to blatantly misrepresent the hardworking men and women in this industry is something that we cannot take lightly.”

NCBA spokesman Mike Deering said FWW is an animal rights group. “The way we see it, we are all cattle producers,” he said. “However, we have a huge problem with an organization in our own industry partnering with an animal rights group. Yes, we have a problem with that.”

Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, denied that FWW is an animal rights group and said there is no partnership with the group. “We work with different organizations on various issues,” he said.

Bullard, a former cow-calf producer from South Dakota, said R-CALF works with FWW on press releases on various issues, but that doesn’t agree with the group on everything. “No question we work with them on issues that we agree with them on,” he said. “What NCBA is doing is deflecting attention to the fact that they’ve recently been caught cheating by misusing beef checkoff dollars. NCBA was caught using those funds to facilitate lobbying efforts that benefit the dominant beef packers.”

R-CALF was started in 1999 and has 8,000 members in 46 states, according to Bullard, plus state-affiliated organizations. He also said his group includes only the “live cattle segment” of the beef supply chain, whereas the NCBA represents producers as well as packers.

“We do not have packers on our board,” he said.

For its part, FWW accuses the beef-packing industry of being more consolidated now than it was 100 years ago when Congress enacted the Packers and Stockyards Act to break up the packers’ monopolies. Just four firms slaughter four out of every five beef cattle, the group claims.

The industry has increased its power further by owning cattle and operating feedlots, which gives it the ability to control supply through all stages of production, according to the group, enabling it to drive down cattle prices while keeping consumer beef prices high.

FWW also claims the poultry sector is completely dominated by a few large processing companies that control every step of chicken production, coercing growers into accepting contracts dictated by the companies. It accuses the companies of forcing growers to spend large amounts of money upgrading their facilities with the threat that, if they don’t, they will lose their contracts.