Watching Big Pork and Big Beef respond to proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture rules to “clarify conduct that violates the P&S (Packers and Stockyards) Act” is like watching Wall Street bankers: They find it impossible to pull their hands out of your pockets long enough to pull themselves out of the mess they've made.
That's a good explanation of recent calls by the National Pork Producers Council and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) to triple the customary 60-day comment period on new rules that give producers more power in today's increasingly opaque, packer-dominated poultry and red- meat markets.
What's up with that?
Simple, say industry watchers. Both NPPC and NCBA made formal calls for the rules to be lost in the bureaucracy because the American Meat Institute, the packers' powerful lobby, wants time to strangle 'em in their crib, undermine GIPSA's new administrator, J. Dudley Butler, and elect a more packer-friendly Congress.
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