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Farmers Speak Out About Meatpacker Mistreatment, Call on USDA for Stronger Protections — Food & Power [1]

['Claire Kelloway']

Date: 2019-07-18

Farmers and advocates visit USDA. Photo courtesy of RAFI-USA. From top to bottom, left to right: Jonathan Buttram,Al Davis, Connie Buttram, Mike Weaver, Steve Etka (CCAR), Chris Petersen, Tyler Whitley (RAFI-USA), Vaughn Meyer, Rudy Howell, Carlton Sanders, Candace Spencer (NSAC), Edna Rodriguez (RAFI-USA), Janie Hynson (RAFI-USA), Pat Howell, Craig Watts, Emily Miller (NSAC), and Ruger Brumbeloe.

This week, livestock farmers and advocacy groups from across the country flew to Capitol Hill to share stories of exploitation by large meatpackers and call for greater farmer protections. At issue is a pending rule by the USDA that will clarify farmers’ grounds to sue meatpackers for retaliation, discrimination, and other abusive practices.

“Corporate bullying, intimidation, and a mafia-like mentality has taken control over this industry,” said Anthony Grigsby, a former poultry farmer from Alabama. “We need laws and regulations to protect the American farmer rather than the big corporations that are currently controlling this industry.”

As several investigations and a federal report have illustrated, meatpackers have incredible power to determine whether or not a farmer stays in business. Poultry and pork corporations strike contracts with farmers to raise animals for them, but the packers determine what type of equipment a farmer must buy, how many animals that farmer receives, how much feed, water, and medicine those animals get, as well as the price the animals are worth at the end of the process.

Because the meatpacking industry is highly consolidated, farmers cannot simply strike a better contract or sell their livestock to a different buyer if they feel slighted. Half of U.S. chicken farmers work in regions dominated by only one or two processing monopolies.

Farmers allege that meatpackers use this power to drive out marginalized producers or dissidents, like Anthony Grigsby. Grigsby, a retired law enforcement officer, and his wife Christy, a 3rd generation farmer, raised chickens in Boaz, Alabama for 12 years until they had to file for bankruptcy this past January.

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[1] Url: https://www.foodandpower.net/latest/2019/07/18/livestock-farmers-speak-out-about-meatpacker-mistreatment-call-on-usda-for-stronger-protections

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