Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 4/27/11

Meat industry groups seeking relief from high feed grain costs due to short corn supplies got no relief on Tuesday when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency is not planning to change its biofuel mandate to ease corn supplies.

The biofuel mandate requires 12.5 billion gallons of ethanol to be produced in 2011.

"Yes, corn prices are quite high, but everything we know and everything USDA knows, it does not lay a very large percentage of that -- much less than 5 percent of any increase -- on the back of some of the corn being used as feedstock for ethanol," she told a conference held by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, according to Reuters.

She added, however, that EPA and USDA continue to monitor corn prices.

Corn futures prices on the Chicago Board of Trade were trading this morning at about $7.60 per bushel for May 2011 delivery. Meat industry groups have noted that about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is currently converted into ethanol.

In January, EPA waived a limitation on selling gasoline that contains more than 10 percent ethanol for newer cars and light trucks, paving the way for fuel that contains up to 15 percent ethanol. 

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