7-7 IAN Wyatt on GIPSA

 Cattlemen scored two big victories in Washington, D.C., a few weeks back. First, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to end 30 years of taxpayer support for the corn-based ethanol industry. In a 73-27 vote, the Senate passed legislation introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to repeal the 45-per cent Ethanol Excise Tax Credit and the 54-cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, in the House of Representatives, lawmakers passed the fiscal year 2012 agriculture appropriations bill that included language to defund the U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposed livestock and poultry marketing rule.

 Here is the Executive Director of the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association, Wyatt Prescott: “the second big victory was defeating an amendment on the house side that would have restored funding to implement the grain inspection and packers administration (GIPSA) proposed rules. GIPSA  proposed these rule changes that would completely restructure the marketing structure of the cattle industry and set the industry back by 20 years. It would open it up to this un due, unnecessary litigation that would basically incentivise meatpackers away from paying cattle producers more for producing better quality cattle in greater quantities and essentially places the government in all of their business deals, so they set these proposed rules out and opened up the comment period and 60,000 comments came flooding in. they took those comments in and one of the big things is they didn’t do any kind of an economic analysis.