WASHINGTON - In a move that has some senators steaming, House Agriculture committee members weakened the terms of a pilot program that will require mandatory price reporting for some meat, Senate staff members said.
Included in the massive spending bill that was voted on by the House is a measure to set up a one-year pilot program to require buyers, sellers and marketers of domestic and imported cattle and sheep to report sale prices to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
But after Senate negotiators had agreed to the wording for the measure, House Agriculture committee members insisted that a sentence be added that will forbid prices from being reported to the public during the test period, staffers said.
“No information collected under the pilot investigation may be disclosed until the report is submitted,” the sentence reads. A report will given to Congress by the USDA after the pilot is completed.
Republican senators Conrad Burns and Larry Craig worked during the weekend to have the sentence removed but could not convince House Agriculture members. Lobbyists for meat packers, who oppose price reporting, had aggressively sought support from committee members, staffers said.
“They effectively gutted it,” one Senate staff member said. “With one sentence it undermines the whole purpose of the reporting program.”
Senators had been trying to pass a price reporting program to give cattlemen information so they could know what the going rates are for their animals. Currently, prices are not known and many claim that big meat companies low ball the prices offered to ranchers.
Without the price reporting system, ranchers do not have a leg to stand on to negotiate prices, proponents, including the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said.
“Price reporting will increase market transparency for cattle producers by giving them the best, most complete information possible with which to make their marketing decisions,” the NCBA said.
“We will work with the 106th Congress to assure that price information will be immediately available to producers and that mandatory price reporting is extended past the 12-month pilot period,” the cattlemen said in a statement.
Senators had asked for a three-year test period as well as language that would create a permanent program if the pilot proved successful. Negotiators accepted a one-year program and agreed to pass another bill to make any program permanent.
But Senate staffers said they doubted price reporting will become a fixed program because of the packers' strong lobbying power as well as the lack of usable information that will be created from the pilot program.
“I don't have high hopes at all,” one staff member said.
Some $250,000 was allotted by Congress to pay for the price reporting pilot.
Pork was not included in the pilot program because the pork industry is already testing out a price reporting system on its own, staffers said.
Also included in the omnibus spending bill is a provision ordering the USDA to set up a one-year pilot program to electronically collect export data for fresh or frozen muscle cuts of meat and develop a system to make the information public within two weeks after it is received.
Meat Industry Insights News Service
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