Dusty Johnson: “on Monday, January 22, introduced S. 142, the Rural America Needs Competition to Help Every Rancher Act, legislation to…”

“on Monday, January 22, introduced S. 142, the Rural America Needs Competition to Help Every Rancher Act, legislation to prohibit meatpackers from owning livestock prior to slaughter. My bill enjoys bipartisan support from Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Craig Thomas of Wyoming. Senator Tom Daschle cosponsored my bill, as well. We believe this proposal will help restore a competitive bidding process to the cash slaughter-livestock marketplace by strengthening the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. The growing, unabated trend of agribusiness consolidation and concentration--a problem really sweeping across this entire nation--is one of the prime concerns of South Dakota family farmers and ranchers. However, concern about meatpacker concentration is not new in the United States. Newspaper cartoons in the 1880s depicted companies that forced the pooling of livestock prior to any purchase agreement as counterproductive ``beef trusts,'' engaging in discriminatory pricing behavior. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate meatpackers to determine if they were leveraging too much power over the marketplace.”