The Senate Agriculture Committee Wednesday passed the bipartisan Meat Packing Special Investigator Act. The legislation will address anticompetitive practices in the meat and poultry industries.
Senator Chuck Grassley says, “With the passage of this bill, my years-long beef with Big Cattle is one step closer to being settled.”
The legislation would create the Office of the Special Investigator for Competition Matters within USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Division. The special investigator will have a team of investigators, with subpoena power, dedicated to preventing and addressing anticompetitive practices in the meat and poultry industries and enforcing antitrust laws.
The committee also passed the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act.
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Ethan Lane responded, “creating a duplicative, bureaucratic new special investigator role is the wrong approach.”
National Farmers Union President Rob Larew says the committee action “is a welcome move towards boosting enforcement of competition laws that get to the bottom of abusive market practices.”
