Mike Callicrate, OCM Vice President, Presentation Part 1 of 2 at the Colorado Independent CattleGrowers Association’s 7th Annual Convention held 2012 July 13th — 15th in Lasalle, CO. View All Presentations Also presenting: Bill Bullard, R-CALF USA CEO David Wright, ICON President & Beef Board Member of Nebraska
Category: GIPSA Rule
The Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s agency that facilitates the marketing of livestock, poultry, meat, cereals, oilseeds, and related agricultural products, and promotes fair and competitive trading practices for the overall benefit of consumers and American agriculture.
GIPSA is part of USDA’s Marketing and Regulatory Programs, which are working to ensure a productive and competitive global marketplace for U.S. agricultural products.
The Agency’s Packers and Stockyards Program (P&SP) promotes fair business practices and competitive environments to market livestock, meat, and poultry. Through its oversight activities, including monitoring programs, reviews, and investigations, P&SP fosters fair competition, provides payment protection, and guards against deceptive and fraudulent trade practices that affect the movement and price of meat animals and their products. P&SP’s work protects consumers and members of the livestock, meat, and poultry industries.
The Agency’s Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) facilitates the marketing of U.S. grain and related agricultural products by establishing standards for quality assessments, regulating handling practices, and managing a network of Federal, State, and private laboratories that provide impartial, user fee funded official inspection and weighing services.
Litigation, Our Best Hope
At the 2009 OCM Annual Conference in St. Louis, Philip J. Weiser, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) announced an unprecedented governmental initiative to bring competition and fair play to agricultural markets. For the first time in history, there was to be a joint and coordinated effort by USDOJ and U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to enforce antitrust laws and restore competition and fairness to the agricultural marketplace. Weiser announced plans for Read More …
OCM Applauds Amendment to Make Checkoff Programs Voluntary
Lincoln, NE, June 18, 2012: The Organization for Competitive Markets expressed its full support for an amendment to the 2012 Farm Bill that would make all mandatory checkoff programs voluntary. The amendment, proposed by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), reads: “No program to promote and provide research and information for a particular agricultural commodity without reference to specific producers or brands (commonly known as a ‘check-off program’) shall be mandatory or compulsory.” These checkoff programs, funded by assessments of Read More …
USDA’s unused case to push its own rule
By Alan Guebert In a striking, two-and-a-half page analysis that ran counter to department leanings, the chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture strongly objected to the department’s use of two outside studies that justified the massive retooling—essentially gutting—of the 2010 update of Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rules to ensure fairness in livestock and poultry markets. The memo was one needle in a nearly 1,700-page haystack USDA forked over in reply to Freedom of Read More …
Do We Still Try to Win or Just Throw in the Towel?
No doubt about it; we got trounced on the GIPSA Rule! We’ve been trounced repeatedly over the past dozen years or so in most all of our market reform efforts. On Capitol Hill and in the regulatory agencies, we have routinely been unsuccessful. In the courts, we would win with the jury but ultimately get reversed at the appellate level. The big agribusiness interests have prevailed. We know that our cause is righteous, but we keep losing! I Read More …
OCM Blasts NCBA for Opposing Protection for Livestock Producers
Press Release Blast NCBA2 Click to read OCM’s press release regarding NCBA’s announcement that it intends to make eliminating the livestock title in the 2012 farm bill a priority.
For Meat Industry, Anti-trust Efforts in Corporate Control Collapse
by David Andrews In 2008 the Federal Farm Bill instructed the Department of Agriculture to write rules for competition in the meat industry. This directive was to complete the details lacking in the 80-plus-year-old legislation on competition in the meat industry from the Theodore Roosevelt era. That legislation was to be enhanced with detailed directions on contracts, anti-trust policies and mandates requiring greater justice in meat production, processing and distribution. The rules were to be developed by a Read More …
Occupy Langdon: We Are Less Than One Percent
by Richard Oswald The Occupy Wall Street Movement has been called “a potent political and cultural conversation”. On the other hand Occupy movements in cities like Washington DC have been called over reported and under attended. That is definitely not the case here because Occupy Langdon has been completely off the radar screen, totally undiscussed, and one hundred percent unreported. Until now. I’m breaking this thing wide open. Here around Langdon and all across the USA, less than Read More …