Senator Chuck Grassley today made the following statement after the Justice Department closed its investigation of the proposed acquisition by Smithfield
Foods of Premium Standard Farms.
Grassley has been a leader in the U.S. Senate in addressing vertical integration in agriculture. This Congress he has introduced legislation to ban packer ownership of livestock as well as legislation to require 25 percent of a packer’s daily kill come from the spot market
Here is Grassley’s statement.
"It looks like nobody’s going to stand in the way of all this vertical integration until we’ve just got one meatpacker in the country. Maybe then the Justice Department will figure out that we’ve got a problem. This makes it all the more clear that we need to address concentration in the farm bill to give the family farmer a fighting chance in the marketplace."