Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 4/20/16

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday narrowly approved an amendment to funding legislation that would stop USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) from finalizing rules pertaining to how the Packers and Stockyards Act is interpreted and enforced.

On a 26-24 vote, the committee approved the amendment offered by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) to the fiscal 2017 funding bill that, as similar measures have in previous years, blocked funding for GIPSA final rules that would have sought to ensure poultry grower rights are protected in disputes with contracting poultry processors.

The vote drew praise from the National Chicken Council and dismay from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC).

The NFU said the scuttled USDA provision would have provided “needed marketplace protections to contract farmers.”
According to NFU President Roger Johnson, the GIPSA rule would have addressed “abusive contracting and marketing practices in the highly concentrated livestock and poultry sectors — such as prohibiting retaliation for farmers who speak to USDA or with members of Congress and requiring transparency in how pay is calculated.”

In a statement, the NSAC called the amendment a Congressional overreach, in effect overturning provisions from the 2008 Farm Bill and the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, both of which direct USDA to ensure that livestock and poultry markets are open, transparent and competitive, and to protect farmers and ranchers from fraudulent, deceptive and abusive practices in their dealings with the meat and poultry industry.

Not so, according to the National Chicken Council, which accused the Obama administration of attempting regulatory overreach.

“USDA seems to be seeking a solution in search of a problem,” said NCC President Mike Brown in a statement. “There are no laws, regulations or riders that seek to take away a farmer’s First Amendment rights or any other rights, or to limit in any way the many legal remedies available to protect those rights. Today’s livestock and poultry contracting and marketing practices all remain regulated by GIPSA, which administers and enforces the Packers and Stockyards Act to protect farmers, ranchers and consumers.”

Brown insisted the current contracting system has worked well for more than 60 years and has helped promote steady improvements in live chicken performance that have benefited chicken farmers, the companies they produce for, the well-being of the birds, and ultimately consumers.

“I want to thank Rep. Harris and the committee for taking this important action,” Brown said. 

National Turkey Federation spokesman Keith Williams voiced similar sentiments.

“GIPSA’s proposed regulation governing poultry and livestock contracts and marketing could wind up hurting the very producers the department claims it is trying to protect,” he told Meatingplace. “Current production arrangements protect growers from market volatility while processors meet the pricing demands of the wholesale customers Congress is right to have GIPSA go back to the specific provisions agreed to in the 2008 Farm Bill.”

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