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Important Cattle Market Reform Legislation Advances from Senate Ag Committee
For Immediate Release
June 22nd, 2022
Both the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act (S.4030) and the Meat Packing Special Investigator Act (S.3870) passed out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on Wednesday. Rocky Mountain Farmers Union supports these initiatives during this critical time for our ranching community and hopes that they will aid further efforts to reduce corporate consolidation in the value chain. “Over the last fifteen years, we have observed a clear correlation between rising packer profits and decreasing cash sales. These bills are an essential component in the reforms towards building a strong, competitive market that will bring viability back to the hard-working ranching families that we depend on,” says RMFU President Dr. Dale McCall. “Our producers deserve a fair shake, and we urge the swift passage of these bills in the full Senate.”
These bills will promote more competition in cattle markets, shedding light on a market that is often opaque by:
Establishing a floor to preserve the cash market and providing USDA authority to increase those levels if warranted.
Setting clear standards based on specific regions and creating a publicly available cattle contract library.
Bringing more transparency by requiring reporting of cattle weights and slaughter deliveries two weeks in advance.
Strengthening penalties for packers who violate these rules.
Requiring livestock mandatory reporting data to be made consistently available.
Creating the ‘Office of the Special Investigator for Competition Matters’ within the USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Division.
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