Thornsberry said this is a gross misrepresentation of what the GIPSA rule requires.
"The GIPSA rule only clarifies existing requirements under the Packers and Stockyards Act, but does not expand those requirements," Thornsberry said. "The GIPSA rule clarifies that practices prohibited under the Packers and Stockyards Act are unlawful regardless of whether they are targeted at the entire livestock industry, or at individuals or groups within the industry. The GIPSA rule does nothing more than clarify that a prohibited practice is a prohibited practice, period."
"That's the basis for AMI's threat and the reason for the skewed results of AMI's study," Bullard said.
"The packers think they are above the law and should not be stopped from engaging in unlawful practices so long as they only target individual citizens. The packers detest the rule's clarification that the Packers and Stockyards Act reaffirms the sovereignty of individual U.S. livestock producers by expressly protecting them from the abusive, monopolistic practices of the highly concentrated meatpackers."
Bullard also said the GIPSA rule's impact on beef packers is primarily limited to recordkeeping requirements, which he said GIPSA needs in order to: 1) readily identify and correct anticompetitive conduct; 2) prevent packers from limiting producers' marketing choices by excluding producers that can meet the packers' input needs; 3) prevent packers from forming exclusive agreements with select cattle sellers; and, 4) prevent packers from exerting market power to apportion market territories or restrain commerce in an effort to lower cattle prices.
"We are not at all surprised by AMI's "the-sky-will-fall'-type study, as AMI is using the same strategy against the GIPSA rule that it used to deprive U.S. cattle producers and U.S. consumers for nearly seven years of Congress' 2002 decision to provide U.S. consumers with labeling information as to the origins of the meat they purchase for their families," he said.
"AMI's strategy is to capture control over the live cattle supply chain just as they've already accomplished in the poultry and hog industries, which resulted in the exodus of 90 percent of all U.S. hog farmers in just the past three decades," Bullard concluded. We don't intend to let them chickenize the cattle industry, and the GIPSA rule is the first step in halting their anticompetitive advances."
# # #
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).