IARN — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has announced changes to the proposed Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act.
Speaking with farm reporters Tuesday morning, Grassley said the updated cattle market reform bill would 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. Approved pricing mechanisms are fed cattle purchases made through negotiated cash, negotiated grid, at a stockyard and through trading systems that multiple buyers and sellers regularly can make and accept bids. These pricing mechanisms will ensure robust price discovery and are transparent.
“We’ve worked for months with Secretary Vilsack and the USDA staff, and also with the Senate Ag Committee, to make technical changes so that USDA can effectively implement the legislation. We heard from stakeholders who wanted to make sure that all Big Four packing plants would be covered because evidently the way the bill was written, there could be some of these Big Four in different parts of the country that weren’t covered by part of it. Now it does not matter where the plant is located.”
The updated bill would also 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.
Grassley adds the bill also includes provisions to create a publicly available library of marketing contracts, mandating boxed 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 and other provisions in the contract that may impact price such as schedules, premiums, discounts and transportation arrangements.
The updated cattle market reform bill is supported by the Iowa Farm Bureau and the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, among other key farm groups.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.
Pictured: Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley meets with the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association on 11-22-2021. (Photo by Brent Barnett)
