This week, livestock farmers and advocacy groups from across the country flew to Capitol Hill to share stories of exploitation by large meatpackers and call for greater farmer protections. At issue is a pending rule by the USDA that will clarify farmers’ grounds to sue meatpackers for retaliation, discrimination, and other abusive practices.

“Corporate bullying, intimidation, and a mafia-like mentality has taken control over this industry,” said Anthony Grigsby, a former poultry farmer from Alabama. “We need laws and regulations to protect the American farmer rather than the big corporations that are currently controlling this industry.”

As several investigations and a federal report have illustrated, meatpackers have incredible power to determine whether or not a farmer stays in business. Poultry and pork corporations strike contracts with farmers to raise animals for them, but the packers determine what type of equipment a farmer must buy, how many animals that farmer receives, how much feed, water, and medicine those animals get, as well as the price the animals are worth at the end of the process.

Because the meatpacking industry is highly consolidated, farmers cannot simply strike a better contract or sell their livestock to a different buyer if they feel slighted. Half of U.S. chicken farmers work in regions dominated by only one or two processing monopolies.

Farmers allege that meatpackers use this power to drive out marginalized producers or dissidents, like Anthony Grigsby. Grigsby, a retired law enforcement officer, and his wife Christy, a 3rd generation farmer, raised chickens in Boaz, Alabama for 12 years until they had to file for bankruptcy this past January.

Grigsby alleges that his poultry processor retaliated against him after he documented irregularities in the quality of his feed and chicks and “brought to light deceptive and unfair practices,” he said. When he spoke up, Grigsby says he was sent more sick birds and improper feed, sometimes no feed at all. Grigsby did not name the company he contracted with.

“The chickens that were delivered to us had infections, vitamin deficiencies, and physical deformities,” he said. “We started receiving fewer chickens than we were supposed to be getting, roughly 15 percent less.” Eventually, the Grigsbys were not receiving enough feed and healthy chickens to turn a profit and their farm went under.

Another poultry farmer, Carleton Sanders, said he experienced racial discrimination as the only black farmer of the 173 farmers that Koch Foods contracted within Mississippi. His story was also featured in a recent ProPublica investigation.

“When I first started growing chickens, I grew for a local family business. They always treated me with respect,” Sanders said. “When a bigger company bought them in 2001, everything changed. I was one of the top growers but I was discriminated against from the start.”

Koch required Sanders make hundreds of thousands in equipment investments not required of other farmers. They also stopped delivering Sanders new chickens and “did not tell me why, and I was still under contract,” he said. “I hate to say it, but they just didn’t like black people.”

Sanders filed a complaint with USDA. His case is still under investigation, and no action has been taken. Meanwhile, the bank has foreclosed on his farm and he filed for bankruptcy and lost his home.

“I wish I could say my story was unique, but it’s not,” Sanders said. “The companies have far too much power to determine how the industry operates. We need strong reforms to level the playing field.”

As it stands, farmers have little legal recourse in the face of mistreatment by meatpackers. Congress passed the 1921 Packers & Stockyards Act to reign in dominant meatpackers and prohibit them from certain anti-competitive and abusive conduct, including subjecting any farmer to “undue or unreasonable preference … prejudice or disadvantage.”

Since the late 1960s, adverse court rulings have effectively shelved the law and gutted its protections for farmers. Courts have ruled that a farmer needs to prove a meatpacker harmed industry-wide competition to violate the Packers & Stockyards Act. This creates a near-impossible standard for challenging individual instances of retaliation and other unfair or deceptive practice.

Congress passed a mandate in the 2008 Farm Bill requiring USDA to clarify ambiguities in Packers & Stockyards Act enforcement. USDA has since proposed several iterations of new enforcement rules, often called the GIPSA rules, but they’ve been stalled and weakened by industry opposition and eventually withdrawn by the Trump administration.

To fulfill its 2008 congressional mandate, USDA submitted a new rule regarding Packers & Stockyards Act enforcement to the Office of Management and Budget just last week for review.

The farmers who spoke along with the Government Accountability Project, Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA (RAFI-USA), and the Organization for Competitive Markets started a campaign, Stand with Farm Families, to ask USDA for strong new rules. They want farmers to be able to speak out and assemble without retaliation. They also want greater transparency in pricing and contracts as well as GIPSA criteria that are specific and actionable, without needing to prove industry-wide harm.

At the press conference, RAFI-USA’s Associate Director Sally Lee said they are “hopeful” that USDA will “recognize that this is a huge opportunity to deliver for farmers.” The campaign intends to encourage public comment on the rule once it’s released.

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