Is The Packers and Stockyards Act from 1921 Obsolete?

Changes to The Packers and Stockyards Act may be coming, as the House Appropriations Committee recently held a full committee markup hearing regarding the Fiscal Year 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill.

The bill includes text stating none of the funds made available by this or any other Act thereafter may be used to implement or enforce the following:

• Proposed rule entitled ‘‘Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act"
• The rule making identified in ‘‘Unfair Practices, Undue Preferences, and Harm to Competition Under the Packers and Stockyards Act"
• The proposed rule entitled ‘‘Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting Tournaments’’
• The advance notice of proposed rulemaking entitled ‘‘Poultry Growing Tournament Systems: Fairness and Related Concerns”
• Or any subsequent substantially similar rulemaking effort, except that funds may be used to, and the Secretary of Agriculture shall, withdraw or rescind any such proposed rules, advance notices of proposed rulemaking, and any such rules that may have been finalized. 

With these changes, industry organizations are mixed have mixed reactions.

A total of 102 organizations, including the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association and R-CALF USA, representing a variety of producers across the U.S., recently sent a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, specifically Chair Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), and Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), urging the “opposition to any appropriations policy riders to limit the rulemaking authority of the Secretary of Agriculture under the Packers and Stockyards Act,” the letter states.

Meanwhile, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) “thanked members of the House Appropriations Committee for advancing the Fiscal Year 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration appropriations bill,” which the organization believes will provide funding for essential programs that support cattle producers while defending against overreaching regulations, says a release.

According to the USDA Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS), “as stated by Congress, the purpose of the Packers and Stockyards Act is ‘to assure fair competition and fair trade practices, to safeguard farmers and ranchers...to protect consumers...and to protect members of the livestock, meat, and poultry industries from unfair, deceptive, unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices....’"

Originally enacted in 1921, the letter notes how its importance is greater now with the highly concentrated and vertically integrated nature of the livestock and poultry industries with widespread consolidation over the last 50 years, while four large processors control 70% of the market for hogs, 62% for sheep and lambs and 85% for cattle.

NCBA Senior Director of Government Affairs Tanner Beymer says the organization is pleased with the committee’s support, stating the bill is “protecting producers’ ability to capture premiums by nullifying USDA’s overreaching Packers and Stockyards rules and lowering cattle producers’ cost burden in implementing animal disease traceability.”

NCBA believes the bill to be “a win for cattle producers,” which would defund the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Packers and Stockyards rules.

Additionally, the letter explains the organizations’ disproval of the repeated use of “appropriations riders” to “derail the rulemaking process.“ 

The bill would also provide $10 million for the purchase of electronic identification (EID) tags and related infrastructure in support of animal disease traceability implementation, says the NCBA release, along with reports on cell-cultured meat, the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program, and the Asian Longhorned Tick, and funding for the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, feral swine eradication and healthy dog importation screenings.

The bill now awaits the full House of Representatives for consideration.