IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 1
Rationale: "The Packers and Stockyards Act and other antitrust
laws provide a sound legal framework for the free market system
of trade in the livestock industries." 86 Ongoing concentration and
integration is eliminating farmers' access to markets and
concentrating power over the food supply in ever fewer hands.
6. Rein in producer cooperatives that use members' equity to leverage
capital and build hog, dairy, and other animal factories that
directly compete with members engaged in livestock farming.
7. Enact legislation that revises federal price support programs to
reward farmers for adopting humane, sustainable animal
management practices; for providing and protecting other
desirable public amenities such as open space, a clean and pleasant
countryside and landscape, prairie establishment or maintenance,
and watershed enhancements; and for taking specific measures to
protect public health, such as going organic or discontinuing
subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feeds or agreeing not to
use recombinant bovine somatotrophin or other production and
growth promoters. Rewards should be reserved for undertakings
that are more fundamental than simply building a better lagoon
and should not be used for animal factory expansions.
Rationale: For decades, farm programs have funneled taxpayer
support to the highest volume farms. Smaller farmers, the
environment, and farm animals have suffered under this
arrangement. Freedom to Farm legislation phased out agricultural
price supports over a period of six years. Yet, the farm economy
indicates that a safety net is needed to protect farmers when market
prices fall below unit costs of production. This may be an
opportune time for recoupling price supports to farmer-initiated
investments designed to help farmers better provide desirable
public goods rather than farm bigger.
8. Support strong national organic standards.
Rationale: Strict U.S. organic standards regarding animal
production are necessary to conform to longstanding international
organic standards for agricultural practices that are based on sound
biological principles and respect for the dignity and
interdependence of all life. Food and agribusiness industry
interests lobbied successfully for weakened organic standards in
the first draft of U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposed
national organic standards. Public outcry resulted in a new drafting
effort by the Department. The new draft proposal answered most
concerns of organic supporters but some things need to be
specified more completely, such as conditions for confinement of
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