Send a message to the USDA!

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John,

Congress enacted the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) in 1921 to protect farmers, ranchers, and consumers from the anti-competitive stranglehold that large corporations had over the United States' meat production markets.

Unfortunately, after decades of industry attacks, increasing consolidation, and weak enforcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the PSA hasn’t lived up to its promise, and farmers and ranchers are paying the price.

Finally, USDA is trying to fix that by issuing strong regulations to reinvigorate the PSA and ensure that farmers and ranchers are protected against Big Ag’s unfair practices.

Will you join us in urging USDA to protect farmers and ranchers from unfair practices at the hands of Big Ag?

The PSA explicitly bans meat and poultry corporations, known as “integrators,” from engaging in unfair practices that either harm individual producers (for example, when a packer refuses to pay a rancher for the cattle they supply in a timely manner) or meat and poultry markets at large (like colluding to suppress prices or wages).

USDA has long understood that the PSA provides expansive protection against integrators harming individual producers through unfair practices, even when there may not be marketwide harm.

However, beginning in the early 2000s, a number of federal courts of appeals restricted this broad protection by requiring farmers personally harmed by unfair trade practices to also prove a “competitive injury” to win their case. This means that unfair practices must cause or be likely to cause marketwide harm to competition. Individual harm is not enough.

Protect Farmers!

This high burden has hamstrung farmers, ranchers, and growers' ability to hold corporations accountable for their abusive practices, and has no basis in the law that Congress passed. Biden’s USDA is working hard to correct this mistake through rulemaking. But rest assured, the industry will do everything possible to stop it.

This is our chance to push for a rule that will finally protect farmers and ranchers against integrators’ unfair trade practices as the PSA intended. Will you join us?

Onward together,

Emily Miller
Staff Attorney
Food & Water Watch

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