Agricultural News
R-CALF USA Critical of AMI Report
Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:34:23 CDT
R-CALF USA is critical of the study released by the American Meat Institute that claims the proposed competition rule issued by USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration would cost the nation abut 14-billion dollars in economic activity. According to R-CALF USA, the study is not an economic study at all, but rather a direct political threat by the monopolistic meatpackers to exact financial harm on producers and consumers as a retaliatory measure if GIPSA proceeds to prohibit them from exerting abusive market power to lower cattle prices to producers and increase beef prices to consumers.
R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry says - the entire study is based on the outrageous threat that packers likely will collude to destroy certain marketing arrangements that benefit everyone in the marketing chain from consumers to retailers to packers to cattle producers by providing high quality beef for consumers. He says - this threat would be laughable if it weren't coming from one of the most economically and politically powerful trade associations known in Washington, D.C.
Thornsberry adds - we think the U.S. Department of Justice should step up its antitrust investigation of the packing industry given AMI's admission that the concentrated meatpackers likely possess, and likely intend to exercise, their abusive market power to coordinate actions to increase food prices for consumers.
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