Date:  January 25, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Chase Carter, Executive Director 402.817.4443

Lincoln, NE ~ The Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) is joining Senator Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) call for hearings by the Senate Agriculture Committee to probe the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) failure to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act.

Last year OCM urged Senator Harkin to request an investigation into USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) performance reports. The subsequent investigation and report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) demonstrates that GIPSA administrators prevented employees from conducting investigations into complaints of anti-competitive market behavior and cloaked its lack of enforcement by inflating the number of investigations conducted.

"This report provides the evidence needed to initiate a thorough house-cleaning at GIPSA," said Keith Mudd. OCM President. "Through Senate hearings we can begin the sweeping reform that’s so sorely needed. Congress must scrutinize these findings to discover how this situation developed and what needs to be done to correct it. While GIPSA administrators were blocking investigations and cooking the books, thousands of producers went out of business while concentration increased and anti-competitive market behaviors went unchecked. U.S. producers deserve to know why a federal agency failed to enforce laws specifically designed to protect them."

Randy Stevenson, OCM Vice-President said, "The OIG report is proof that a federal agency lied to Congress about its performance by cooking the books Enron-style. In fact, the GIPSA Eastern Regional Office was reprimanded for not following orders to inflate and distort the number of actual investigations performed."

"GIPSA has competent economists in place who were not permitted to do their job while producers and rural communities suffered the consequences of increased concentration and anti-competitive actions. One has to wonder what the liability is for this dismal failure. The administrators who supported these actions should be brought to justice. OCM and producers across the nation are standing by to see how Congress will address this serious problem," said Stevenson.

"USDA’s Inspector General Phyllis Fong is a courageous individual," noted Mudd. "The Inspector General is charged with a mission of promoting effectiveness and integrity in the delivery of USDA ag programs. It is clear that Ms. Fong takes her charge seriously and we applaud her tenacity."