WASHINGTON – Today, Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa), a lifelong farmer and senior member of the Senate Agriculture
Committee, participated in a markup on two bills to restore fairness and
competition in the cattle marketplace: the
Cattle
Price Discovery and Transparency Act, which Grassley helped
introduce last November, and the
Meat Packing
Special Investigator Act, which Grassley helped
introduce last June. Both bills advanced in committee today with bipartisan
support.
“With the passage of these two important
bills, my years-long beef with Big Cattle is one step closer to being settled.
Iowa cattle producers have struggled to receive a fair price for years – long
before inflation hit a 40-year high. It’s past time for Congress to stand with
independent cattle producers and put an end to the cozy relationship between
large meat packers and big cattle feedlots,” Grassley said.
The Cattle Price
Discovery and Transparency Act
The big four meat packers often enter
into hidden contracts with large cattle feedlots, making it more difficult for
smaller, independent producers to get a fair shake or even identify a fair
price in the market and making it easier for packers to increase their profits.
For example, while independent cattle producers have seen market prices fall or
remain stagnant, Tyson Foods – one of the big four meat packers – reported that
they raised prices for beef
23.8 percent during the first
three months of this year. JBS, another one of the big four meat packers,
recently settled a
$52 million beef
price-fixing lawsuit.
In May of 2020, Grassley
introduced a bipartisan
proposal to increase transparency in cattle pricing. Throughout the months that
followed, Grassley
spoke on the Senate
floor to advocate for
his legislation, drawing attention to the nefarious activity of the nation’s
big four meat packers.
After working extensively with his
colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Grassley joined Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.),
Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in
introducing the
Cattle
Price Discovery and Transparency Act last November. They continued
working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to make technical changes that ensure the
USDA can effectively implement the bill – introducing an
updated version
last month. The committee held a
hearing on the bill in
late April.
Learn more about the passage of the
Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act
HERE.
The Meat Packing
Special Investigator Act
The big four meatpacking companies currently
dominate the market, controlling 85 percent of the daily slaughter. Grassley
has repeatedly leveraged his position as ranking member of the Judiciary
Committee to
press top executives
in the meatpacking industry on their anticompetitive practices.
In April of 2020, Grassley called on the
Departments of Justice and Agriculture to launch an
investigation into potential
market manipulation and other illegal activity by large meatpacking companies,
which was later
echoed by the Trump
administration. Two months later, he urged the USDA to
release its report
from its investigation into beef pricing margins following the fire at Tyson’s
plant in Holcomb, Kansas.
In June of 2021, Grassley joined Sens.
Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) to
introduce the
Meat
Packing Special Investigator Act to address anticompetitive practices in
the meat and poultry industries. Their proposal seeks to create the “Office of
the Special Investigator for Competition Matters” within the USDA’s Packers and
Stockyards Division. A month after they introduced this bill and brought
attention to the issue, the USDA announced a significant investment to
address anticompetitive practices in the livestock industry.
Learn more about the passage of the
Meat Packing Special Investigator Act HERE.
Learn more about Grassley’s work to
support independent cattle producers
HERE.
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