For Immediate Release

The Organization for Competitive Markets

Contact: OCM Vice President Fred Stokes at 601-476-5568, STOKESFARM@worldnet.att.net

October 26, 1998

On October 22, 1998, Reuters News Agency reported the following:

"Ag Committee weakens meat price reporting plan

House Ag Committee members have relaxed the terms of a pilot program requiring mandatory price reporting for cattle and sheep sales. The measure, included in the spending bill approved today, launches a one-year pilot program to require buyers, sellers and marketers of domestic and imported cattle and sheep to report sale prices to USDA. At issue is a sentence the committee added to the measure forbidding prices from being reported to the public during the pilot. Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller yesterday expressed anger that meat packer interests apparently succeeded in scuttling the price reporting requirements sought by twenty-some State Attorneys General and producers across the country."

There has been confusion regarding the fate of mandatory reporting of livestock transaction prices (cattle and sheep) in the chaos of the final hours before passage of the last of the FY 99 appropriations bills. The article quoted above is the second I have seen that indicates mandatory reporting survived to be signed into law by President Clinton. Apparently, what did not survive is public disclosure by USDA of the prices gathered by the mandatory reporting.

Stock market analogies are useful in times like these. Suppose the federal government was to hire price reporters to gather all stock market transaction prices, but no one among the public could see the information gathered. Or the stock exchanges were required to record all transaction prices but no one could see them. Suppose stock tickers and stock quotes on all the web sites in the world were to be shut down? What possible purpose could this secrecy serve? How would these suspect actions affect public confidence in the stock market?

Perhaps there is some utility in conducting a study for a year on mandatory price reporting on beef and lamb, but what possible justification is there for keeping the reported trades secret. What would be the harm of public disclosure of this collected information? What happens at the end of the one-year trial period? Does USDA tell us everything is fine, and we don’t need to see the secret prices?

To reassure the public, the voluminous "Starr Report" was released to the public, personal and lurid details and all. Surely there is justification for real-time disclose of the collected livestock trades to assuage the concerns of livestock producers. They are entitled to know the market price for their production! They need to know all the trades. Voluntary and selective reporting just doesn't get the job done.