Meat Institute’s Comments on the Unfair Practices Proposed Rule
Meat Institute’s Comments on the Unfair Practices Proposed Rule
The Meat Institute submits these comments regarding the above-referenced proposed rule (proposal or rule). The Meat Institute is the nation’s oldest and largest trade association representing packers and processors of beef, pork, lamb, veal, turkey, and processed meat products and Meat Institute member companies account for more than 95 percent of United States output of these products. The Meat Institute provides regulatory, scientific, legislative, public relations, and educational services to the meat and poultry packing and processing industry.
Over the last several years the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS or the agency) has published a "suite of major actions … to create fairer marketplaces for poultry, livestock and hog producers." The proposal is the most recent of that series of rules and it is just as flawed, legally and factually, as its predecessors. As in past rulemakings and contrary to longstanding judicial precedent, AMS stubbornly clings to the idea a plaintiff need not show injury to competition, or likelihood of injury to competition, to prevail in a Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA or the Act) 202(a) or (b) case. That position was wrong before and it is wrong now.
