Statewide Iowa — All six members of Iowa’s congressional delegation are sponsoring legislation to give independent cattle producers more information about cattle prices, but they have just a limited number of days to convince colleagues it should be included in a must-do bill.
The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act must be reauthorized by December 3rd and Senator Chuck Grassley is lead sponsor of a plan to also force disclosure of the prices paid in private sales of cattle being raised and sold under contracts with a meatpacker.
Grassley met with cattle producers in Ames on Monday. Brad Kooima a cattle feeder and commodity broker from Rock Valley says he may go weeks before one of the country’s four big meatpackers makes an offer to buy his cattle.
The plan Senators Grassley and Joni Ernst along with the one Iowans Cindy Axne, Randy Feenstra, Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks are co-sponsoring in the U.S. House would force meatpackers to disclose how many cattle they plan to slaughter each day for at least the next two weeks.
