It’s time to restore one of our best protections against the meatpacking monopoly.
More than 100 years ago, the U.S. passed its first law to protect farmers and ranchers from concentrated, abusive monopoly power in the livestock industry.
Farm Action has demonstrated how the Packers and Stockyards Act (P&S Act) successfully leveled the economic playing field for decades, and how the erosion of its power by courts in the 1980s allowed corporations to gain unprecedented control over meat and poultry production.
The result of all this? Cattle, poultry, and hog farmers are going out of business, workers are subjected to low pay and hazardous conditions, and consumers are facing skyrocketing prices at the grocery store — all while corporations like JBS, Smithfield, and Tyson Foods line their pockets with record profits.
In June of 2021, the USDA announced it would begin work on new rules to strengthen this landmark law, and we are seizing this critical opportunity. Below is a quick rundown of the three rulemaking processes and how we are engaging. More detail is available in USDA’s Agricultural Competition report.
About: This proposal shines a light on the inner workings of the poultry tournament system, a corrupt and abusive scheme in which contract poultry farmers must compete for a price they will be paid for raising poultry.
Status: The comment period for this rule ended in August of 2022. Farm Action’s comments unequivocally urged the USDA to follow the Justice Department’s lead and ban the tournament system once and for all.
To learn more about this issue, check out our short video on YouTube.
About: In order to facilitate enforcement of the P&S Act, USDA is proposing to clarify what conduct is considered discriminatory, prejudicial, retaliatory, or deceptive. This proposed rule will:
Status: The comment period for this rule ended on January 17, 2023. Farm Action’s comments included specific recommendations to more effectively hold poultry integrators and meatpackers accountable for their widespread discriminatory and retaliatory conduct.
About: Currently, producers who have been harmed by unfair practices must prove harm to the entire industry — a prohibitively high burden of proof that protects corporate monopolies from legal action. In addition to defining unfair practices and undue preferences, this regulation would clarify that parties do not need to demonstrate sector-wide harm in order to bring action for market abuses.
Status: This proposed rule has not yet been issued by the USDA.
We were encouraged when a momentous executive order to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy opened a critical window of opportunity to strengthen the P&S Act.
But USDA’s pace has been slow. In our routine work with the agency, we regularly push them to move on the rules and give the P&S Act the boost it needs to prevent massive corporations from accruing and abusing power.
In 2022, we convened a coalition of food and farm groups to show public support for these reforms. With a team of attorneys carefully documenting the USDA’s legal authority to issue and implement the rules, our letter demonstrated that the USDA can and should act without delay to help farmers and ranchers struggling under the thumb of anti-competitive corporate monopolies.
We then held an event in Washington, D.C. to publicly hold the USDA’s feet to the fire, where we released our report card grading the agency’s progress on its directives from the executive order. Following this event, USDA Secretary Vilsack told the press that he’s looking for “guidance and direction” from Farm Action on competition issues.
In July 2023, we issued the second annual report card at an online event. We saw some progress towards the goals of the executive order — but we won’t let up our pressure campaign until the P&S Act has been restored to its full strength.
Speakers and panelists at our 2022 event: “Making the Grade? A Midterm Review of the Biden Administration’s Commitment to Food System Competition.”
We’re also working with members of Congress, who have the power to step up in this fight for fairness in our livestock and poultry markets by legislating reforms to the Packers & Stockyards Act.
We helped develop the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act, which contains policies that would empower workers and farmers in the extremely consolidated meatpacking industry, where hazardous conditions and unfair pay have long been the norm. By forcing the big meatpackers to play by a different set of rules, we can stop them from squeezing their employees and contract growers — who often have no other choice of employer — in the pursuit of excessive profit.
Another policy we developed would shift influence over the food system to the farmers and workers who power it. By cracking down on monopolistic practices and placing a moratorium on factory farms, the Farm System Reform Act helps farmers who have for too long been displaced and shut out of markets by huge corporations. Our political partner Farm Action Fund champions this bill and is calling for co-sponsors.
In April of 2022, Farm Action’s Angela Huffman spoke at the world’s largest antitrust conference, hosted by the American Bar Association, on a panel titled “Is Competition in Agriculture Suffering a Drought?”
For this event, the Farm Action team produced a research report demonstrating the importance of the Packers and Stockyards Act (P&S Act) and antitrust law for American farmers raising livestock and poultry.
Farm Action is encouraged by efforts to strengthen antitrust enforcement by reinvigorating the Packers & Stockyards Act, and offered recommendations to USDA.
Meatpackers pay a pittance in settlements compared to the record profits they make off these pricing schemes. There must be serious consequences for corporations that get rich by cheating consumers.
The Justice Department’s consent decree “enforces the law against brazen violations that have gone unchecked for decades,” Farm Action said in its comment.
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