Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 6/13/22

The House Rules Committee on Monday will consider a bill to battle food and fuel inflation and meat industry consolidation, signaling the full chamber could vote on it as early as this week.

What’s in it? The omnibus appropriations bill known as the Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act would create a meat and poultry special investigator within the USDA, create a food supply chain task force, authorize year-round sale of E15 grade ethanol fuel, provide subsidies to small meat producers and adjust conservation programs to include precision agriculture.

The package is a smorgasbord of ag legislation before Congress, put together by House Democrats in an attempt to act on record-setting inflation roiling consumers and crack down on meat industry consolidation.

The outlook: Many of the included bills passed out of the House Ag Committee in a bipartisan fashion, largely by voice vote or unanimous consent.

A major outlier, however, is the Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act, which cleared the panel on a mostly party-line 27-21 vote.

Introduced by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), the bill would create a new office within USDA to investigate complaints of anticompetitive behavior under the Packers and Stockyards Act — a 1921 law to regulate the meat and livestock industry.

A bipartisan companion measure has been introduced in the Senate by Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Republican and industry blowback: The inclusion of the investigator bill could make passage of the omnibus a partisan battle, despite many of the included bills having wide bipartisan support on their own.

Ag Committee Ranking Member G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) last week called the bill a “charade” in a statement.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the North American Meat Institute, two powerful lobbies on behalf of the meat industry, also oppose the investigator bill.

Not a Republican monolith: Some Republicans have become increasingly supportive of additional oversight in the meat sector.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), whose Butcher Block Act is included in the omnibus package, voted to advance the special investigator bill from committee in May, and the Senate companion measure has six Republican cosponsors.

Also on the Hill this week: The House Ag Committee on Tuesday will hold a farm bill hearing on non-SNAP nutrition programs and will dig into the role of climate research in supporting agriculture resiliency on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Senate Ag on Friday will hold its second field hearing for the 2023 farm bill at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the home state of Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.).