Agricultural News
Oklahoma Pork Council Officers Worry About Impact of GIPSA Rule on Their Hog Operations
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:20:55 CDT
Two officers of the Oklahoma Pork Council were among those at the USDA-DOJ Workshop on Competition in Livestock this past Friday in Ft. Collins, Colorado. We talked with Jeff Mencke, President of the OPC, as well as with Dottie King, OPC Treasurer. Both feel the proposed rule, if adopted as it currently is written, would adversely impact the ability of their hog operations to survive.
Click on the LISTEN BAR below for an audio report that includes comments from both of these pork leaders.
Earlier, we had talked with Roy Lee Lindsey, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Pork Council, about the Rule- and from the OPC website, here are a few of the highlights of Lindsey's view of the proposal.
"This rule is the most sweeping reform of how livestock marketing is regulated since the adoption of the Packers and Stockyards Act over 90 years ago. This is not a tweaking of an existing regulation."
"The USDA may be following what Congress directed in the last Farm Bill, but they've taken that inch and are trying to go a mile and are trying to reshape how we market livestock."
"While USDA's stated intent of the changes in the GIPSA rule are to provide more fairness and opportunities to individual pork producers, what will actually happen is they will take away opportunities for producers because processors will say, 'it's not worth it to enter into contracts; I'll just have to own all these animals myself'."
"Our position at OPC is we don't want the government to dictate how we do business. We want our producers to have every opportunity to market their animals."
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