On Thursday, Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Tester (D-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) reintroduced the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act in the 118th Congress.
This legislation includes the following, as summarized by the United States Cattlemen’s Association:
• Require the Secretary of Agriculture to establish 5-7 regions encompassing the entire continental U.S. and then establish minimum levels of fed cattle purchases made through approved pricing mechanisms—negotiated cash, negotiated grid, at a stockyard or through trading systems that multiple buyers and sellers regularly make and accept bids
• Establish a maximum penalty for covered packers of $90,000 for mandatory minimum violations. Covered packers are defined as those packers that during the immediately preceding five years have slaughtered five percent or more of the number of fed cattle nationally.
• Create a publicly available library of marketing contracts, mandating box beef reporting to ensure transparency, expediting the reporting of cattle carcass weights, and requiring a packer to report the number of cattle scheduled to be delivered for slaughter each day for the next 14 days. The contract library would be permanently authorized and specify key details about the contents that must be included in the library like the duration of the contract and provisions in the contract that may impact price such as schedules, premiums and discounts, and transportation arrangements.
“The U.S. cattle industry is cyclical by nature - there are ‘up’ years and ‘down’ years,” says Justin Tupper, USCA president. “But for producers, those up years come far too few and in between the down years due to an increasingly consolidated industry. Restoring fair and competitive market practices is essential to leveling the playing field for U.S. producers.”
Tupper adds, this bill gives producers access to valuable information that can help them make better, more profitable marketing decisions.
Sen. Grassley says in a recent press release, “Iowa cattle producers have struggled to receive a fair price for years – long before the massive market distortions cattle producers have endured most recently. 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.”
Additionally, Sen. Fischer, Wyden and Test echo the sentiment that their cattle producing constituents desire greater transparency in the cattle market and a more fair playing field.
Other cosponsors to this bill include Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (R-Ohio), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), John Kennedy (R-La.), and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), with 11 of the bill’s cosponsors also members of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
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