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Grassley questions intent of National Cattlemen’s Beef Association over 50/14 bill

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is questioning the motivation behind the National Cattlemen Beef Association’s opposition to his 50/14 cattle market transparency bill.

The legislation, cosponsored by Jon Tester of Montana, would require a minimum of 50 percent of meat packers’ weekly volume to be purchased on the open or spot market and require it to be delivered within 14 days.

The Iowa Republican tells Brownfield his bill is based on feedback from the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

“I’d like to know why the National Cattlemen’s Association, or whatever their name is, why they don’t want (what) the independent producers want, which would be 50 percent. What’s wrong with that?”

NCBA’s Ethan Lane told Brownfield last week discussions on how to return leverage to the producer segment of the supply chain and ensure price discovery has evolved beyond Grassley’s bill.

Grassley says he wants to make sure NCBA is representing the views of the family farmer, not meatpackers.

“And too often we see, sometimes, agriculture groups getting in with big business. And when these four big producers have 80 percent of the market and there’s not a lot of competition, it just seems to me that anything that opens up competition is going to help every beef producer.”

Lane says NCBA wants a more regional approach, and Grassley suggests he’s open to working with other lawmakers to get the bill through.

  • Stay the course Senator Grassley! NCBA is a packer promoting organization and does not represent the farmers and ranchers who raise the cattle.

  • Right on, Judy. Good to hear from a long time family rancher who knows the impacts of big ag, policies that unfairly support big ag and the egrigious shenanigans of the NCBA that look supportive of beef producers on the surface but are actually backbone support of big ag corporate control of our food system at the expense of thousands of family farms and ranches.

  • Senator Grassley thank you for fighting for us grass roots cattle producers. Everything being pushed for by the NCBA is for the beef processors and retailers not us bottom of the ladder cattlemen. Two days ago I attended a virtual orientation meeting after being voted in as the representative for Montana Cattlemens Association to the board of the Montana Checkoff system. I asked questions after both NCBA reps spoke. One question was why has the retail price of beef remained high since the repeal of Mandatory COOL in 2015 while the price of cattle since then has cratered. The answer believe it or not was the main purpose of the Checkoff was to extract as much money out of the consumers pockets as we possibly can regardless of supply and demand. These people believe it is alright to gouge consumers and at the same time short change the ranchers who are now making far less then they were in 1990 out of each dollar spent on beef. One must also remember that it was NCBA who had the loudest voice begging for subsidies for cattle producers last year because of Covid while the processors had record profits. So who really benefited from these government payments?

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