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Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue decided not to move forward with an interim final rule of the so-called Farmer Fair Practices Rules, which was written in 2016 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA). The agency also announced it will take no further action on a proposed regulation of the Farmer Fair Practices Rules.
According to NPPC, the interim final rule would have broadened the scope of the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) of 1921 related to using “unfair, unjustly discriminatory or deceptive practices” and to giving “undue or unreasonable preferences or advantages.” Specifically, it would have made such actions per se violations of federal law even if they didn’t harm competition or cause competitive injury, prerequisites for winning PSA cases. (The proposed rule would have defined the terms in the interim final rule.)
USDA in 2010 proposed several PSA provisions – collectively known as the GIPSA Rule – that Congress mandated in the 2008 Farm Bill. Although lawmakers did not include a provision eliminating the need to prove a competitive injury to win a PSA lawsuit, the agency included one in its proposed regulation.
NPPC was the leading voice in opposition to the broader GIPSA rule, generating in 2010 more than 16,000 comments from pork producers against it, and to the interim final rule. It got about 2,000 comments early this year in opposition to that rule.
An Informa Economics study found that the 2010 GIPSA Rule today would have cost the U.S. pork industry more than $420 million annually – more than $4 per hog – with most of the costs related to PSA lawsuits brought under the “no competitive injury” provision included in the interim final rule.
Tuesday October 17, 2017/ NPPC/ United States.
http://nppc.org
