USDA officials says they may reconsider the Farmer Fair Practice Rules that were thrown out by Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue. During a court hearing challenging the decision throwing out those rules, a USDA attorney said the department intends to place a proposed rule on their regulatory agenda in 2019. Nebraska Pork Producers Association Executive Director Al Juhnke says there needs to be reason with any rule that protects producers and meatpackers yet doesn’t go too far.

He says because the reconsideration likely won’t occur until the spring of 2019, there’s still time for the pork industry to weigh in on the issue.

Juhnke says for fair practice rules to work, it has to be fair to both the packers and to the producers.

The court case challenging the scrapping of the Farmer Fair Practice Rules was brought by the Organization for Competitive Markets.