THE WAY FORWARD - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 179

and coordinated examination of market power in the food chain. Congress should reexamine this artifi-
cial division of labor and jurisdiction. The convoluted enforcement is not only confusing, it has resulted in
little oversight of the food industry, even though the anticompetitive impacts of consolidated retail market
power span the entire food chain.
The DOJ and FTC have joint or overlapping antitrust authority over mergers, monopolies, and collusion
like price fixing. The FTC has authority over industries with a significant impact on consumers, including
supermarkets, food manufacturers (anything in a bag, box, or can), and farm inputs like seeds and fertilizer.
The DOJ oversees most other farm-related items such as the dairy sector and the manufacturing of farm
implements. The USDA has jurisdiction over the meat and poultry industries under the Packers & Stock-
yards Act.
Although the FTC has authority over supermarkets, over the past two decades, as a wave of mergers has
swept the grocery store industry and Walmart has emerged as the largest food retailer in the country, the
FTC has largely ignored this consolidation. The FTC should reenergize its enforcement of anticompetitive
behavior in the retail grocery industry, which has been largely dormant since the 1970s. The FTC should
investigate the impact of consolidated retailers on the entire food supply chain. This should include looking
at the coercive marketing arrangements that the big retailers impose on suppliers, and it should examine
the effect on consumers in terms of price, quality, and product choice.
The confusion and lack of action on antitrust is demonstrated by the DOJ's failure to finish its inquiries
into the consolidation and market power of Monsanto and the dairy industry. These investigations have
languished at the agency for years; some even predate the Obama administration. They should be vigor-
ously pursued and finalized as soon as possible, along with any others that are in the pipeline.
However, in 2011, we saw how afraid our policy makers are of making the food industry operate fairly.
When President Obama ran for office in 2008, he heard firsthand about the meat industry's noncompetitive
practices and how its consolidated market power reduced the earnings of livestock producers, forced them
to become significantly larger, and encouraged them to adopt the more-intensive practices used on factory
farms. Based on the first-ever livestock title in the 2008 Farm Bill, which was fought for by family farm
advocates, the USDA was directed to develop new rules to ensure that livestock producers are treated fairly
by meatpackers and poultry companies. The Obama administration lacked the courage to finalize these
commonsense rules and capitulated to industry pressure, leaving farmers vulnerable to the market power
of the consolidated meat industry.
The Western Organization of Resource Councils, a regional network of seven state-based grassroots or-
ganizations that has worked tirelessly to save family farms and ranches, chided the administration.
WORC members had high hopes for these rules based on the content of the original proposal and have been
waiting for their final publication for over 18 months with great anticipation. With this final rule, USDA and the
Obama Administration have let down the independent farmers and ranchers of this country. In his campaign,
President Obama said he would fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets,
control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices. Instead of taking this opportunity to keep
that promise, with these rules the Administration has caved in to pressure from big meatpackers, and is allowing
unfair and deceptive practices to continue. 1
Unfortunately, the food movement was largely silent in this important battle—a lost opportunity for
challenging the market power of the meat industry and all of its associated abuses of consumers, farmers,
and the environment. Implementing the needed reforms would have had a direct effect on curtailing the
unfair and artificial advantages and profits from factory farming and providing family livestock producers
the ability to make a living.