R-CALF Suggest Government Regulate Cash Cattle Markets

R-CALF Suggest Government Regulate Cash Cattle Markets

Lorrie Boyer
Lorrie Boyer
Reporter
R-CALF, United stalkers of America CEO Bill Bullard says that when it comes to the cash market for the cattle industry, it is not a free market, and that keeping government out of the cattle market has led to the biggest meat corporations controlling the markets.

“Economist,,, Nathan Miller from Georgetown University, who co authored the academic study by Your power in the beef packing industry stated that most transactions in the cash market clear within a few hours late in the week. Now this finding is consistent with the allegations we made in our historic class action antitrust lawsuit against the big four packers, we point to evidence and alleged that most of the beef packers cash cattle purchases were made on Fridays and in talking to cash market sellers across the country. I've heard that the weekly cash cattle trade generally happens during a very narrow window of time on Fridays. So how does that happen in a competitive free market? How do the four largest competing beef packers know when the trading window in the cattle market opens each week? And just how is this competitive when 1000s of cattle sellers must sell 100,000 head of fat cattle each week in a very narrow window of time at the end of the week.”

Which Bullard says equates to very little bargaining power for individual cattle producers. The solution he says, is to have Congress regulate the cash markets.

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