By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent WASHINGTON, D.C. — According to the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), a new proposed livestock rule would make the relationship between packers, processors, producers and growers more fair.
The mission of the livestock part of the agency is to carry out enforcement of the Packers & Stockyards Act (P&SA), a law passed in 1921 to limit the power of meat packers, swine contractors and live poultry dealers. According to the proposed rule, the scope of the P&SA is broad.
Also, according to the 17-page proposed rule – which has a comment period that’s been extended to late November – different court cases ruled on over the years helped to clarify the P&SA. It quotes the U.S. Supreme Court in Stafford v. Wallace: “the chief evil feared is the monopoly of the packers, enabling them unduly and arbitrarily to lower prices to the shipper, who sells, and unduly and arbitrarily to increase the price to the consumer, who buys.”
According to GIPSA, many practices can be unfair without being anti-competitive; however, some recent court decisions have ruled that an action must be anti-competitive in order to be a violation of the law.
According to GIPSA these practices include not allowing a poultry grower to watch birds being weighed, using inaccurate scales, providing a grower poor-quality feed, giving a grower sick birds to raise, failing to provide a grower the growing contract in a timely manner or retaliation against a grower.
Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, said there are already rules on the books against all of those things. “I think the problems are vastly exaggerated,” he said.
Whether the new rule will be good or bad for business, if it’s implemented, all depends upon whom is asked. Many people have commented on the rule so far, both for and against.
One commenter, Joe Zwack from Dubuque County, Iowa, has a cow-calf operation. He wrote that he was at GIPSA’s recent competition in agriculture workshop in Fort Collins, Colo., but never had a chance to speak.
“Dubuque County, Iowa used to be the largest hog-producing county in the United States of America …” Zwack wrote. “Over a period of about 25 years, though, the big meat packers began moving in.
“In a series of moves, the Pack, later named FDL, was forced into a more and more limited line of products and sales area; then, basically pressured into deals with large packers; then shut down … Don’t let the packer special interest lobby kill rural America! We need your new proposed GIPSA rules.”
Another commenter, identifying himself as farm manager Jose Rojas, is against the proposed rule.
“The way I understand the rule, as proposed, (the) GIPSA rule could have a damaging impact to the operation I manage,” he wrote.
Paul Brennan, executive vice president of the Indiana State Poultry Assoc., agrees.
“We’re not supportive of it,” Brennan said of the proposed rule. “The current system is very good at enabling a number of people to continue to have a life on the farm by giving them a contracting opportunity.”
He said that it might help marginal farmers, but “one of the things it would do is diminish or eliminate those premium opportunities.” He said it will hurt small producers, not help them.
USDA officials strenuously deny that the rule would eliminate or diminish premium opportunities.
“Over time it would reduce a trend towards more independent producers,” Brennan said. “Many growers are not excited about this.”
GIPSA will consider comments received by Nov. 22. Comments may be submitted via e-mail to comments.gipsa@ usda.gov or by hard copy via mail, hand delivery or courier to: Tess Butler, GIPSA, USDA, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Room 1643-S, Washington, D.C. 20250-3604.
Or, fax a comment to 202-690-2173 or submit via the Federal eRulemaking Portal online at www.regulations.gov |
