Chris Deluzio: “I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois for her powerful words. This democracy is not for sale. That should not be…”

“I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois for her powerful words. This democracy is not for sale. That should not be something that is controversial in this Chamber or anything else. Our constituents expect us to fight for all of them. One of the places that we have seen this consolidation, this concentration, this raw power really hurt folks is in agriculture. We see it because we know that food production is a key step in that grocery supply chain, and we know we hear from our constituents that the cost of groceries is too high. We are all paying too much for food because of this consolidation that we see in agriculture. Folks are getting ripped off. They are tired of it. This increased consolidation also puts the squeeze on smaller, local farms, family farms, small businesses, people often deeply rooted in their communities, in my community, the communities of so many of the Members of this Chamber. This summer I visited a farm in my district and met with farmers from the Beaver/Lawrence Pennsylvania Farm Bureau roundtable. Some of them are livestock producers. They sell their meat or poultry to be packed and processed. The meatpacking and processing industries are some of the most heavily consolidated in the country, and they have very little competition. For the past decade, the four largest meatpacking and processing corporations in the United States have maintained about two-thirds of the country's market share.…”