It’s about time — better late than never!
We need you to show our support for open, fair, and competitive livestock markets!
You can help in our mutual fight to ensure family and independent farmers have access to markets, control over production decisions, and transparency in prices!
Please see how to make a public comment and talking points below!
For decades, MRCC members and Missouri’s independent family farmers have been organizing for strengthened and enforced antitrust laws, including demanding this proposed rule recently announced by USDA.
A critical role of government is to ensure fairness in markets by facilitating and balancing power in the economic relationships among farmers/ranchers, consumers and food companies. Currently, inadequate federal legislation and the lack of anti-trust policies and enforcement allow a handful of corporations to continue to consolidate market power, manipulate prices and create anti-competitive market structures.
Today, a small handful of corporations overwhelmingly dominate the U.S. livestock industry. Corporate mergers and foreign buyouts have concentrated corporate power and increased a few meatpackers ability to unfairly manipulate market conditions in their favor, at the expense of independent family farmers, consumers, workers and our local economies.
Four major companies have taken control of the marketplace in beef and control over 85% of all the U.S. steer and heifer market. In the pork industry, four firms now control over 65% percent of the hogs.
Coupled with a rapid trend towards vertical integration, meatpackers increasingly control all stages of production, eliminating market transparency and creating an environment ripe for price manipulation and discrimination. Because the same few players in the market control both supply and demand, the basic principles of supply and demand cannot function.
On June 28th, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) published the proposed rule, “Fair and Competitive Livestock and Poultry Markets.” The public comment period is open until Sept. 11th (note: the deadline was extended from an original August 27th deadline).
The purpose of this proposed rule is to take a step in promoting fair and competitive markets in the livestock, meats, poultry, and live poultry markets.
It’s a little wonky, so bear with us: this proposed rule redefines “unfair practice” as conduct that harms market participants and/or conduct that harms the entire market. Currently and without this rule, in order for a farmer to make a legitimate claim of an unfair practice by a corporate meatpacker, they have to show that the unfair practice injured the ENTIRE MARKETPLACE, an obviously impossible threshold.
Show your support for increased antitrust rules, working to make corporate agribusiness more accountable to farmers, consumers and all Americans.
If you are a farmer, please include that in your comment, and include if you have an example of an unfair practice that limited your marketing choices, how much you got paid, etc.
Here is how you can TAKE ACTION and make your public comment into USDA:
Here is the proposed rule:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/06/28/2024-14042/fair-and-competitive-livestock-and-poultry-markets
Click HERE to make your comment:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/06/28/2024-14042/fair-and-competitive-livestock-and-poultry-markets#open-comment
Talking Points:
- Today, a small handful of corporations overwhelmingly dominate our food supply. The concentration of market control in the top four firms in U.S. food retailing, grain processing, red meat processing, poultry processing, milk processing, and nearly every category of food manufacturing is at an all time high.
- Corporate mergers and buyouts have concentrated the power of these firms and increased their ability to unfairly manipulate market conditions in their favor. This unprecedented level of market consolidation effectively eliminates free market competition to the detriment of independent family farmers and consumers.
- A critical role of government is to ensure fairness by facilitating properly operating markets and balance in the economic relationships among farmers/ranchers, consumers and food companies. Currently, inadequate federal legislation and the lack of enforcement of anti-trust policies allow a handful of corporations to continue to consolidate market power, manipulate prices and create anti-competitive market structures.
- This proposed rule is essential in taking a necessary step to create open, fair and competitive livestock markets, for the benefit of independent family farmers, rural economies, consumers, workers and a decentralized food system.
- “Unfair practice” should be defined as a practice that causes or is likely to cause injury to one or more market participants.
- I support the definition of “unfair practice” to include a practice that harms either individual family farmers, groups of farmers and/or the market as a whole.
- This proposed rule would be greatly beneficial to Missouri farmers by giving farmers the ability to get restitution by correctly defining “unfair practice” as conduct that harms market participants and/or conduct that harms the entire market. Currently and without this rule, in order for a farmer to have a valid claim for an unfair practice by a corporate meatpacker, they have to show that the unfair practice injured the ENTIRE MARKETPLACE, an obviously impossible threshold.