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NPPC, NCBA request more comment time
The National Pork Producers Council and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association have asked the USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) Administrator for a 120-day extension on the public comment period on its proposed livestock marketing rule. NCBA President Steve Foglesong says the industry needs more time to analyze the potential legal and economic impacts of the proposed change to the Packers & Stockyards Act on U.S. cattle producers. He says the NCBA sees the scope of the proposal going “well beyond what Congress intended under the 2008 Farm Bill.” NPPC President Sam Carney says they think the proposed rule is “overly broad and very vague.”
The current comment period ends August 23rd.
The NCBA, the pork council, and the Chicken Council and others are supporting packers who are using their contracts NOT to give incentives for better product from producers or efficiency, but to use their contracts to commit complex economic frauds on producers. The new rules address some of these economic games that are currently being played to reduce the value that the average economic producer receives from the packers and from the economy. Packers justify this on one hand by saying they are giving the consumer lower prices but it is just a transfer of wealth from producers to consumers to give the packers playing the games competitive advantage so they can take over more of the markets.
The Packers and Stockyards Act has not been enforced by previous administrations and the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) did not use their rule writing authority to correct the frauds in the market. The packers have been able to buy the best judicial judgments money can buy and the judges have been citing a lack of rule writing by GIPSA, which is finally here with these rules.
The NPPC and the NCBA are showing that they have packer interests in mind or they would have worked to stop these economic frauds from occurring. Now they are throwing up all the flack they can. It is the chickenization of the pork and beef industry.
Tom