JBS merger fuels concern about meatpacker concentration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, May 2, 2008

Western ranchers plan to keep pushing for livestock market reforms despite the failure of the Farm Bill Conference Committee to ban meatpacker ownership of live cattle prior to slaughter.

Late last night Senate conferees killed the ban on a voice vote.

“The packer ban would have helped return competition to the livestock markets and fairness to livestock contracts by stopping the biggest packers from controlling market access and lowering market prices,” said Mabel Dobbs, a rancher from Weiser, Idaho, representing the Western Organization of Resource Councils. “Congress has left us to the wolves.”

Dobbs said concern about consolidating markets is high because of JBS Swift’s plan to buy two of the country’s largest meatpackers, Smithfield Beef and National Beef. The acquisition would make JBS Swift the largest packer in the world.

If the merger succeeds, the three largest meatpacking companies in the U.S. would process nearly 9 out of 10 of the livestock slaughtered.

Based in Billings, Mont., WORC is a network of conservation and family agriculture organizations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wyoming.