The Justice and Agriculture Departments have launched a new task force to consider how to promote competition in the agriculture industry, Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney said at a conference on competition in the dairy business in Madison, Wis. on Friday.
The task force will review enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, according to Varney’s prepared remarks. That law regulates the livestock and dairy industries and prohibits them from engaging in unfair practices. The law is administered by the Department of Agriculture.
Today’s workshop is the latest installment in a series of town-hall meetings on competition issues in agriculture. The DOJ heard from poultry farmers in Alabama last month and discussed the seed industry in March in Iowa.
The Wisconsin workshop focused on the state’s $26 billion dairy industry, where farmers are unhappy about the low prices they are paid for raw milk.
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who urged Varney to include the state in her agriculture itinerary and was on hand at the conference, said retail prices for dairy products have not kept pace with the sharp declines in farm milk prices. That discrepancy, he said, according to prepared remarks, has lead him to question whether consolidation in the industry had given some firms too much power in the market.
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