After years of wrangling and debate, regulations intended to help small farmers dealing with large-company meatpackers are going to take effect in the United States. The Obama administration announced the changes in the last month in power.
The administration first proposed similar rules in 2010, but Congress blocked funds for them. Congress lifted that ban in a spending bill last year. The United States Department of Agriculture announced three rule changes.
One rule, effective immediately, makes it easier for farmers to sue the companies they contract with over unfair practices.
Two other proposed rules aim to protect the legal rights of growers and help poultry producers who say they are being unfairly targeted. "All too often, processors and packers wield the power, and farmers carry the risk," said then Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack.
USDA says the four largest poultry processors control more than half of the market, giving chicken or turkey producers limited options to contract with local processors.
The Department says that, among other unfair practices, this means processors can suppress how much the producers are paid or pit them against each other.
Effective immediately, the interim final rule, would clarify that a farmer doesn't have to prove that an unfair practice is damaging to the entire industry to sue.
The poultry and livestock processors immediately criticized the new rules, saying they will raise meat prices, cost jobs in rural America and prompt frivolous lawsuits.
"The vast majority of chicken farmers in rural America are happy and prosper raising chickens in partnership with companies, and they don't want the government meddling on their farms and telling them how they should run their businesses," said National Chicken Council President, Mike Brown.
In a release, the National Pork Producers Council called the rules, "an apparent attack on rural America for its role in helping elect Donald Trump as president." Vilsack called that statement, "absurd" in a call with reporters shortly afterward.
"This has nothing to do with the election of 2016, it has everything to do with what is fair to producers," Vilsack said.
Mike Weaver, president of the Contract Poultry Growers Association of the Virginias, supports the new rules. He said American family farmers "came out of the woodwork" to support Trump and said these regulations are designed to protect them.
"We helped put him in office, we need some consideration," Weaver said.
It's unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will side with the larger businesses or the smaller-scale growers.
Trump hasn't commented on the issue, though he has promised to get rid of many of the Obama administration's regulations, calling them burdensome.
~Jim Romahn