Summary: Recently, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives released its version of the Fiscal Year 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, which slashes funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agency charged with preventing meatpackers from engaging in unfair, deceptive and discriminatory livestock procurement practices that have forced independent farmers and ranchers out of the business. According to Bill Bullard, the meatpackers have enlisted the aid of key congressional members to help them avoid U.S. laws that prohibit meatpackers from engaging in unfair trade practices against U.S. farmers and ranchers who sell their livestock into one of the most concentrated, monopolistic marketing systems in the entire U.S. economy. “Four powerful meatpackers now control about 85 percent of the U.S. fed cattle market and these four meatpackers have coerced Congress into derailing a USDA rulemaking that would, for the first time, properly implement the 90-year-old Packers and Stockyards Act that was intended to prevent monopolistic meatpackers from taking advantage of independent farmers and ranchers,” he said. The meatpackers have specifically targeted an important rulemaking by the USDA Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) that belatedly implements the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 (PSA). The GIPSA rulemaking, known as the GIPSA rule, does this by imparting fairness and transparency in the livestock marketplace and by holding meatpackers accountable for their unfair cattle procurement practices that have contributed to the loss of over half a million U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers during just the past three decades. In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to Bill Bullard, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA). Stay tuned!
