On March 4 and 5, JBS-S.A. of Brazil announced the acquisition of National Beef Company of Kansas City, America’s fourth largest beef packer, as well as the Smithfield Beef Group. In little more than a year, JBS has become the largest cattle feeder and beef packer in the United States. The Department of Justice has undertaken a premerger analysis to determine if the acquisitions by JBS are anticompetitive under U.S. antitrust laws.
The Center for Rural Affairs has been working with allies to convince Justice that this mega-merger must be scrutinized more closely and that the premerger analysis should be extended. We are also gathering comments from organizations, churches, farmers, ranchers, and other concerned citizens through an online petition and comment page. We have over 500 citizen signers of our letter to Justice and, given time, hope to make that thousands.
You can find out the status of the Justice Department’s analysis and, if there is still time, comment and sign onto our letter at
http://www.cfra.org/competition.
As previously reported, local residents near Ravenna, Nebraska, have engaged in a running battle with Swift over dumping of paunch (gastrointestinal contents of slaughtered cattle) in open fields near their homes. Since the JBS takeover, the residents’ limited progress has been reversed, and paunch dumping is as egregious as ever.
In early April the mayor of Grand Island told JBS-Swift officials that the company’s plant could be shut down over unresolved wastewater problems. Nebraska Dept. of Environmental Quality issued notices to the city and JBS-Swift four times in the last nine months for violating discharge permits.
The Iowa General Assembly is poised to provide $22.8 million in true “pork barrel” spending for yet another research study of how to make liquid manure from industrial livestock operations not stink (HF 2688). House Ag Committee Chair Delores Mertz (D-Ottosen) and Speaker Pat Murphy (D-Dubuque) played a legislative shell game to get the bill out of committee and reported to the floor.
Contact: John Crabtree, 402.687.2103 x 1010 or
johnc@cfra.org for more information.
