Washington - The US Agriculture Department would exercise “great prudence” if given authority to require mandatory livestock price reporting, said a top department aide.
Voluntary reporting is the backbone of USDA's market news program, and the agency would compel reporting only in cases where current data are inaccurate due to incomplete reporting. Such data are essential for market efficiency and equity said USDA Chief Economist Keith Collins said at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on livestock issues.
A bill offered last year by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, would give USDA the authority to require mandatory livestock reporting.
Glickman has recently called for increased authority in that area and also requested that price information gathered by USDA's Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration be used to verify the accuracy of prices the industry now voluntarily reports to USDA, Collins said.
One argument in favor of mandatory price reporting is that “we would have more data to work with” and that could help individual livestock producers in their marketing decisions, Collins said. But USDA would want to tread carefully to avoid angering industry sources that are already voluntarily reporting a great deal of price information, he said.
In a related area, USDA has already announced plans to develop regulations that would make purchasing or selling livestock, with the condition that the price not be reported, a violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act, he said. Meanwhile, the US meat industry has been “unenthusiastic” about a USDA effort to generate interest in a voluntary “made in USA” meat labeling program, Collins said.
The industry appears concerned that the cost of the program could be much more than any expansion in beef demand, he said.
In the near future, USDA should issue a long-awaited proposed rule for the export sales reporting of pork and beef, Collins said. The proposal will exclude poultry and track the volume of export sales but not prices, he said.
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