The Congressional Cattle Hearings, Why Cattlemen are Screwed, and the Only Way to Fix It

Sorry I’m slow. I was running a planter all last week. I started listening to the 8 hours of hearings this week while its been raining.

By Jim Mundorf

I am tired of the BS. I just finished listening to around 8 hours of last weeks Congressional Committee hearings. There have now been four or five, (I’ve lost track) Congressional hearing that I’ve listened to on the cattle market in the past couple years. And now, while staring at the pages of notes I just took there is one glaring conclusion that I can’t get out of my mind. The American Cattlemen’s biggest problem in theses hearings, and in the whole industry, can be summed up in 8 letters…NCBA and USDA.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, NCBA, claims they are an organization representing all aspects of beef production. Who they actually represent are the largest corporations in beef production, beef packers and large feedyards who have partnered with those packers. They have an office in DC where they work out of to bend the ears of as many politicians as they can. What has become obvious in these hearings is that politicians from the states of Arkansas, Kansas, and Colorado are owned by the packers and get all their talking points from NCBA. Arkansas is home to Tyson Foods. Kansas is home to the largest packing plants, and multiple corporate feedyards. Colorado, is the home of JBS and the largest corporate feedyard Five Rivers.  

The NCBA President and lobbyist Don Schiefelbein, and Cattlemen Gilles Stockton and Coy Young.

The Hearings

In the Senate hearing the NCBA was able to get their favorite economist Stephen Koontz, and a large Kansas Feedyard owner Shawn Tiffany to testify. Their testimonies’ were the polar opposite of the small independent cattleman and woman, Mark Ruffin from Missippippi, and Shelly Ziesch out of North Dakota. The most disappointing display occurred in the house hearing, where the President of the NCBA, Don Schiefelbein, was propped up alongside two other cattlemen, Missouri’s Coy Young, and Montana’s Gilles Stockton. There, the lobbyist’s testimony was treated as if he was just another cattleman, and not the president of an organization that lobby’s politicians for the beef packers. So after Young and Thompson testified about their own hardships and the corrupt market they are forced to deal in, the lobbyist comes in with his gee-golly Minnesoota accent and talks about how the cattle market is working fine and all the problems are just part of the market cycle. Even more disappointing is how multiple politicians only seemed interested in what he had to say and completely ignored the other two.

What really capped off the slap in the face to cattlemen is in the next session all 4 CEO’s of the packing corporations testified and when asked about the problems with the market, they all kept referencing the lobbyist’s testimony calling him, “the cattleman in the first session.” The CEO’s continuously used Schiefelbein’s testimony of a market cycle as their excuse for covering up their collusion and price fixing. Schiefelbein was put there to cover the CEO’s asses and he did a great job.

Why Cattlemen are Screwed

I don’t expect Senators and Congressmen and women to understand all the ins and outs of the cattle market, and it has to be pretty confusing to them to watch different cattlemen and women give completely opposite testimonies from each other. When NCBA’s Schiefelbein talks about how he is against Government intervention and mandates, those in Congress probably don’t realize that all Cattlemen are mandated to pay $1.00 per head into the Beef Checkoff that the NCBA controls. They probably don’t realize that the NCBA is funded by this Government mandated checkoff. The NCBA lobbyists probably don’t explain to the politicians that last year they received over $53 million from this mandated checkoff that they use to control all of ag medias messaging to the cattle industry. No, the politicians probably have no idea the funding for this organization that does the bidding of the beef packers in DC comes from cattlemen and women that they are trying to put out of business, so that their corporate friends can get bigger. They probably don’t have any idea that cattlemen have no way of changing how the checkoff operates, and that the organization that allows the NCBA to continue to fill their pockets and control the industry, is their very own USDA.

The only fix

So what happens to the Cattle Market Price and Transparency Act? After watching all of these hearings, researching all I can about the cattle industry, and listening to respected cattlemen and women who are both for and against the bill, I have come to a conclusion… it doesn’t matter. It seems like the independent cattle producers are living in a small town held hostage by criminals who have the police force on the payroll. The towns people’s solution is to pass more laws. Laws that they hope will be enforced by a police force that refuses to do its job.

For me the industries only hope is a complete overhaul of their police force, the USDA. The first testimonies given in these hearings were from two worthless USDA bureaucrats whose answers can be summed up as, “we need more funding.” Apparently the endless amount of tax dollars poured into that department aren’t enough to get them to do their jobs, even though last year while cattlemen were selling out and going broke, the USDA invested $10 million into growing meat in a labratory.

The Packers and Stockyards division of the USDA is supposed to control packer concentration. In my lifetime the four largest packers have went from controlling 35% of the beef market to controlling 85%. The hog market has been completely destroyed and controlled by packers. The list of crimes the packers have plead guilty to and got a slap on the wrist for is too long to list. The most egregious case being JBS using U.S. funds to bribe Brazillian officials in order to buy the U.S’s third largest beef packer. For all of their crimes nothing is done. Yes, occasional fines are handed out, amounting to a brothel owners monthly payment to the dirty cop. Just the price of doing business, and business is good.

The reason these hearings keep happening, and nothing seems to get accomplished, is because the NCBA is always there. When the Cattlemen go home, NCBA stays in DC to continue to grease the corrupt wheels that keep the status quo. The corrupt wheels are controlled by the USDA, who also happen to be in charge of NCBA’s major source of funding, the Beef Checkoff. The current Ag Secretary Vilsack has been there for 10 of the last 14 years and has proven he doesn’t give a damn about independent cattlemen. There are laws and regulations on the books that, if enforced, would have controlled and stopped these packers from getting this big and manipulating the system. The only hope for independent cattlemen is to somehow get the USDA to do its job. I know it sounds impossible, and I don’t know how to get that to happen, but I don’t see small independent cattlemen surviving unless it does.