The House Agriculture Committee voted to elevate the USDA’s reports on livestock sales prices to an essential federal service that would stay in operation even if there is another government shut-down. The designation was written into a bill to extend the life of the mandatory livestock price-reporting law for cattle, hogs and sheep to Sept. 30, 2020. The law is to expire on Sept. 30. Committee members said the price reports, gathered from stockyards around the country, are vital to setting market prices, and they criticized the USDA for halting the reports during the 2013 shutdown. The reports of “spot” prices often are used in calculating the price for cattle and hogs produced under contract to a packer.
The price-reporting bill was approved by voice vote, as was a bill to reauthorize the Grain Standards Act during a 15-minute meeting by the committee. The grain bill includes language that emphasizes USDA must provide inspection services at export terminals without interruption. The grain industry and farm groups complained about delays in shipments last winter during a labor dispute at West Coast ports. They said the USDA should have intervened when state agencies, which often perform inspections on behalf of the USDA, claimed conditions were too unsettled for their inspectors to report to work.
In a statement, two trade groups said the bill “contains triggers that allow for waivers of the official inspection requirement and empowers exporters to use other state-delegated official agencies if grain inspection services are disrupted and the USDA fails to restore such service within specified deadlines.”