NCBA, NCC Respond to Latest Packers and Stockyards Rule
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.
U.S. agriculture groups are now reacting to the USDA’s latest proposed Packers and Stockyards rule titled “Fair and Competitive Livestock and Poultry Markets.”
From the USDA, the rule “would tackle longstanding challenges around interpretations of unfairness and competitive injury for the livestock, meat, and poultry sectors.”
Meanwhile National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Ethan Lane calls the proposed rule a “direct attack” on cattle producer profitability. “By creating criteria that effectively deems any innovation or differentiation in the marketplace improper, USDA is sending a clear message that cattle producers should not derive any free market benefit but be paid one low price, regardless of quality, in the same of so-called fairness,” he says.
National Chicken Council Interim President Gary Kushner says the latest rulemaking retreads a failed proposal from more than a decade ago, which was written by a plaintiff’s lawyer who made money suing poultry companies. “The current facelift to the ‘Harm to Competition’ rule would open the floodgates to frivolous and costly litigation,” Kushner says. “The proposal would inflict billions in economic harm.”
Check out the rule for yourself at https://tinyurl.com/y5vc4kdy
