Bill Introduced At Federal Level To Improve Fairness In Cattle Market
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., has helped introduced the “Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act.” The bill is part of Daines’ efforts to return fairness to the cattle marketplace dominated by four major meat packers.
“We must bring transparency to the cattle market to ensure Montana ranchers are competing on a level playing field and receiving the fairest price for their beef. This bill is an important step forward to ensuring the largest packers can no longer manipulate the market,” Daines writes.
The “Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act” will:
• Establish regional mandatory minimum thresholds of negotiated cash and negotiated grid trades based on each region’s 18-month average trade to enable price discovery in cattle marketing regions. In order to establish regionally sufficient levels of negotiated cash and negotiated grid trade, the Secretary of Agriculture in consultation with the Chief Economist, would seek public comment on those levels, set the minimums, and then implement them. No regional minimum level can be more than three times that of the lowest regional minimum, and no regional minimum can be lower than the 18-month average trade at the time the bill is enacted.
• Require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create and maintain a publicly available library of marketing contracts between packers and producers in a manner that ensures confidentiality.
• Prohibit the USDA from using confidentiality as a justification for not reporting and make clear that USDA must report all LMR information, and they must do so in a manner that ensures confidentiality.
• Require more timely reporting of cattle carcass weights as well as requiring a packer to report the number of cattle scheduled to be delivered for slaughter each day for the next 14 days.
