Kato said:
A so called "Value Pack" of chicken breasts will cost you about $23.00 this week at Safeway. For that matter, the price of chicken in the store has kept the market up for small flock owners that want to sell roasting chickens direct to the public too. If you want to buy a farm raised roaster here, it's going to cost you between $1.75 and $2.00 a pound. Same goes for turkeys.
Boy, that would sure jack the price of chicken in the U.S. up. I wonder how much "demand" beef has lost because GIPSA has not been enforcing the economic protections of the PSA against Tyson and others so they could drive the price of chicken down. Jason mentioned this once before.
While cattlemen have been dogged with the logic of decreasing the price of beef to compete with chicken, I think the reasoning needs to be turned around the other way. Why not make chicken cost more by making sure the Tyson's of the world don't cheat their producers and drive the price of chicken lower. In view of the OIG report, GIPSA seems to have been doing the opposite.
If the price of chicken in the U.S. was not so cheap, there would be a lot more beef sold and at higher prices. Those knuckleheads at the NCBA were too worried about "protecting" beef that they didn't seem to realize that protecting poultry producers would go a long way to helping beef "demand". A lot more than the checkoff ever did or would.
Either the NCBA is being run by a bunch of idiots or they are in bed with the packers by not making sure that GIPSA enforces the law. Either way, they do a disservice to cattle producers.