Market Consolidation and Anti-Trust

by Natasha Chart

categories: Corporate Kneebiters, Farm Economics, Livestock

Published June 23, 2009 @ 08:39PM PT

There's a play on words in there somewhere, where could it be ... Oh, right, back to the task at hand. Jill Richardson explains the need for livestock competition reform:

... When [a government pricing error and evidence of industry market manipulation, including underpayment of meat producers,] came to light, the rancher mentioned above, Herman Schumacher of South Dakota, joined with two others and sued the beefpacking companies (Tyson, Excel, and Swift) to obtain the money lost during those six weeks. (Schumacher, by the way, has long been a thorn in the side of Big Beef, testifying on the injustice in the beef industry before the Senate Ag Committee in 1998.) The ranchers won - and then the case went to appeal and they lost. Whereas a jury sided with Schumacher (and awarded the class of cattle producers $9.25 million - about $40 per cow), [but the award was appealed, and the appeals court decided that it wasn't enough to have proved that the packers broke the law.]

... Now Schumacher is undergoing retaliation by Tyson, who demands that he pay their court costs - a hefty $15,881.38. And, according to R-CALF, the U.S. Marshals have been called in to enforce this by seizing Schumacher's home if he does not pay. ...

The USDA failed to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) of 1921 for the whole of the Bush administration and now the courts have found that ranchers don't even have standing to sue for damages over it unless they can prove 'intent.'

Such are the perks of big business-class, corporate citizenship. The law doesn't apply to you. You can harm the interests of consumers and small businesses almost with impunity.

Though it's a situation that would have disgusted the people who dreamed of a nation of laws and not men. It would have disgusted Adam Smith, the moral philosopher who invented capitalism, to see such powerful monopolies still running the show and claiming to be following the system he proposed to rid the world of mercantilism and all-powerful guilds.

This isn't democracy and it isn't capitalism. And whatever it should be called, I doubt the proper term is very polite.

(Photo credit: Sunfox on Flickr.)