Mississippi Ag law Attorney J. Dudley Butler former administrator of the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration under USDA says the two needed solutions to addressing the cattle market price problem plaguing independent producers and benefitting meat packers lies with a Fair Market Transparency Regulation proposed during his term at GIPSA from 2009 to 2012 and reinstatement of mandatory country of origin labeling.

He says reinstatement of Country of Origin Labeling is the most inexpensive way of addressing the cattle market price problem.

Butler says there is no competition between packers and they have a fixed price. He says they also purchase cattle from Mexico and Canada cheaper than in the U.S. and then process them and can do that because there’s no labeling law in effect for consumers to know where their meat comes from.

Butler says competition for both the pork and poultry markets have gone away and the last remaining one for the packers to control is beef. He says it’s really a national security issue.