|
|
|
|
Agriculture panel concerned with GIPSA rule
All antibiotic uses improve animal health
Agriculture Panel Concerned With GIPSA Rule
Washington, July 20, 2010 - Members of a House Agriculture subcommittee expressed deep concern with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposed rule on livestock and poultry contracts and marketing arrangements, a regulation that would limit pork producers’ options in selling pigs to processors, according to the National Pork Producers Council.
Reps. David Scott, D-Ga., and Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Agriculture Committee’s Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Subcommittee, in a hearing today said they are troubled that the proposed rule amending the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) goes beyond the congressional intent of the 2008 Farm Bill. The legislation authorized USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) to issue rules clarifying certain provisions of the PSA and implementing new ones related to capital investments, arbitration and poultry contracts.
Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who attended the hearing, and other subcommittee members also voiced concerns with the broad scope of the rule and its likely adverse effects on the livestock and poultry industries. One panel member said the rule would put livestock producers in his district out of business. Some lawmakers who participated in crafting the 2008 Farm Bill pointed out that Congress chose not to act on some proposals now included in the GIPSA rule they because would disrupt and destroy the U.S. livestock industry.
“Several of the rule’s provisions go further than what was required by the Farm Bill,” said NPPC President Sam Carney. “NPPC believes the proposed rule is overly broad and very vague, with many terms not well defined. As written, it appears the rule would have a negative effect on the ability of pork producers to enter into arrangements to produce hogs under contracts and to sell hogs through marketing arrangements.”
Panel members also expressed concern that GIPSA – so far – has refused to extend for the “most significant regulation on livestock markets in nearly 100 years” the 60-day period for submitting comments on the rule. The current deadline is Aug. 23.
NPPC, in a July 6 letter to GIPSA Administrator J. Dudley Butler, requested a 120-day extension of the comment period. It said the scope of the proposed rule and the lack of an adequate economic analysis of its impact on the livestock industry warrant an extension.
Last week, 22 members of the House Agriculture Committee signed a letter to USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack requesting an extension of the comment period for 120 days past an Aug. 27 “workshop” on competition in the livestock industry in Ft. Collins, Colo.
All Antibiotic Uses Improve Animal Health;
Healthy Animals Improve Human Health
(For more information about antibiotic use in pork production:factsaboutpork.org.)
Washington, D.C., July 15, 2010 - “All uses of antibiotics improve animal health, and these improvements in animal health can substantially improve human health,” concluded one expert who testified yesterday at a congressional hearing on antibiotic use in livestock production and antibiotic resistance in humans.
Randal Singer, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, who for 12 years has studied antibiotic uses and antibiotic resistance, reiterated to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health what the National Pork Producers Council and other livestock groups repeatedly have stated about antibiotic use in food-animal production: “The best way to manage antibiotic uses in animal agriculture is through sound, rational, science-based policy.”
Opponents of modern livestock production, however, are pushing a theory that antibiotic use in food animals is leading to an increase in antibiotic resistance in humans and, therefore, antibiotic use in livestock production must be restricted. Several groups, including Keep Antibiotics Working and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are supporting legislation sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that would ban the use in livestock and poultry of antibiotics that prevent or control diseases and improve feed efficiency and weight gain.
Witnesses at the congressional hearing, testifying in favor of such a ban, claimed that a number of studies link use of antibiotics in livestock with antibiotic resistance in humans, and they cited the results of a 1998 ban in Denmark on antibiotic growth promoters and preventatives.
But, testified Singer, “the removal of growth promoting antibiotics from use in food animals in Denmark resulted in an increased reliance on therapeutic doses of medically important antibiotics to treat the ill animals.”
In April, the top scientists for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health testified that there is no scientific study linking antibiotic use in food-animal production with antibiotic resistance in humans
“Pork producers have a moral obligation to use antibiotics responsibly, under the direction of a veterinarian, to protect public health and produce safe food,” said Howard Hill, DVM, a member of the NPPC board of directors. “Producers also have an ethical obligation to maintain the health of their pigs, and antibiotics are an important tool to help us do that.”
Groups Urge Immediate Action On FTAs
Washington, D.C., July 8, 2010 - An ad hoc coalition of agricultural and food organizations in a letter sent today urged members of Congress to work with the Obama administration to remove any remaining impediments to a “rapid implementation” of the free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
At the recent G20 Summit in Toronto, President Obama announced a November deadline for dealing with outstanding obstacles to the implementation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to gain congressional approval of the deal in 2011.
That agreement and the FTAs with Colombia and Panama were finalized more than three years ago – and approved in those countries – but are awaiting congressional action.
The 42 groups that signed on to the letter pointed out that other countries are moving forward with FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea to the detriment of the United States. Canada and Colombia, for example, recently approved a trade deal that gives duty-free access to a host of Canadian products going into the South American nation.
Over the past five years, Colombia has been the largest market in South America for U.S. agricultural products, with exports totaling $4.3 billion.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the U.S.-Colombia FTA would boost U.S. agricultural exports by more than $815 million a year. “But now that Canada has gained preferential access ahead of us,” the organizations said, “we are likely to be operating in catch-up mode for years to come.
”That already is occurring for some sectors. U.S feed grain producers, for example, have been particularly hard hit because of the preferential access their foreign competitors have in the Colombian market, with the U.S. market share falling sharply from 96 percent in 2007 to 38 percent in 2009.
“The fact is, literally hundreds of FTAs are being negotiated around the world, and global trade liberalization is taking place. But it is taking place with the United States standing on the sidelines,” said the groups.
NPPC Asks For Extension On GIPSA Rule Comment Period
Washington, D.C., July 6, 2010 - The National Pork Producers Council today asked for an extension of the comment period on a proposed federal rule that could limit pork producers’ options in selling pigs to processors.
In a letter to J. Dudley Butler, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, NPPC urged a 120-day extension of the comment period, which currently is set to expire Aug. 23.The proposed rule would implement parts of the 2008 Farm Bill related to livestock and poultry contracts, including establishing criteria under the Packers and Stockyards Act for what constitutes providing or giving undue or unreasonable preference or advantage in a contract.
After a preliminary review, NPPC said the proposed rule goes well beyond the parameters set out in the Farm Bill, specifically with regard to sections on “unfairness,” purchasing practices, contracts, “competitive injury” and recordkeeping.“Our initial reading of the proposed rule,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa, “is that it is overly broad and very vague. We need more than 60 days to determine all of the ramifications this regulation could have on America’s 67,000 pork producers.”
NPPC said the scope of the proposed rule and the lack of an adequate economic analysis of its impact on the livestock industry warrant an extension of the 60-day comment period. The organization also pointed out that the Aug. 23 comment deadline is four days before the next USDA-Department of Justice workshop on competition in the livestock industry. Public comments from that event in Ft. Collins, Colo., as well as ones from the final Dec. 8 workshop in Washington, D.C., should be considered before finalizing a rule, said NPPC.
INFORMATION
Event CalendarDid you forget your
password and username?
Contact the MPPA office
at (507) 345-8814 or
