990510 US Pork Group Drafting Price Reporting Bill

Washington - The National Pork Producers Council said it would have ready this week a legislative proposal to require U.S. slaughterhouses to report terms and prices paid for pigs.

The plan would be similar but separate from similar legislation announced by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association for mandatory reporting of boxed beef, live cattle and beef exports, said John McNutt, president of the pork group.

“We're very separate industries and have very separate issues,” McNutt told reporters after testifying at a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on price reporting. “This can't be a one size fits all solution.”

McNutt declined to say how the pork producers' proposal would differ from the cattle group's plan, saying he had not yet seen the beef proposal. The U.S. cattlemen said they had reached an agreement with major packing plants that would require twice-daily reporting of live cattle prices to the U.S. Agriculture Department, plus weekly prices and destinations of beef exports.

The cattle group said it expected wide Congressional support for its draft legislation.

The pork group is especially keen to find out prices and terms in contracts between packers and large producers, and data about value-added pork products sold by slaughterhouses.

McNutt told the House panel that data collected through the pork check-off fund showed “very large price variations” across the United States in prices paid to farmers.

The National Pork Producers Council said its draft legislation would include the following requirements:

-- Slaughterhouses would submit daily purchase data to the USDA, grouped by sppot sales, formula contracts, risk-managed contracts, futures contracts, and packer-owned kill data.

-- Copies of purchase contracts offered by packers that kill more than 1,250 swine weekly would have to be kept on file by the USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, under the pork farmers' draft legislation.

-- The USDA would begin publishing a monthly report on retail sales of meat products.

-- The USDA would issue its hogs and pigs inventory each month, instead of quarterly.

Momentum has been building for some form of mandatory price reporting since last December, when U.S. pork producers saw farm prices briefly sink as low as $8 per hundredweight. At the same time, grocery stores' retail prices for various pork cuts remained stable.

This year, the USDA has forecast that pork prices paid to farmers will inch back up to about $35 per hundredweight, a level that is still below breakeven costs for some farmers.

University of Missouri studies indicate American pork producers lost about $2.6 billion in equity last year, and may lose another $1 billion this year.

The Clinton Administration has also stepped up its scrutiny of the concentrated beef and pork packing industries. Earlier this month, the USDA accused Cargill Inc of underpaying U.S. farmers by some $1.8 million for hogs, a claim that Cargill denies.

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