Mexican Trucking Dispute Hurting U.S. Pork

U.S. pork exports to Mexico have fallen by a whopping 20 percent since the Mexican government added pork to the list of U.S. products against which it is retaliating for the failure of the United States to live up to a trade obligation, said the National Pork Producers Council in a press release.

In August, Mexico put a 5 percent tariff on most U.S. pork imports, as well as tariffs on other U.S. products, in reprisal for the United States not complying with a provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that allows Mexican trucks to haul goods into America. The provision was supposed to become effective in December 1995.

The National Pork Producers Council has been urging the Obama administration to resolve as quickly as possible the trucking dispute, which first erupted in March 2009 when Mexico placed higher tariffs on an estimated $2.4 billion of U.S. goods after the U.S. Congress failed to renew a pilot program that let a limited number of Mexican trucking companies to haul freight beyond a 25-mile U.S. commercial zone.

Mexico in August added products, including pork, dairy and apples, to its initial retaliation list of 89 products after the Obama administration failed to present a proposal for resolving the trucking issue.

According to recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Canadian government, U.S. pork exports to Mexico dropped by nearly 5,000 metric tons from August to September – a loss of about $9 million – while Canadian pork exports increased by almost 2,000 metric tons.

“The trucking issue needs to be resolved now, before the U.S. pork industry loses even more of its market share in Mexico,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. “We’re talking about the livelihoods of American hog farmers; we’re talking about lost U.S. jobs. And it isn’t just the pork industry; this is happening to the producers of the other 98 products on the retaliation list.”

Mexico is the second largest market for the U.S. pork industry, which shipped $762 million of pork south of the border in 2009. Since 1993 – the year before NAFTA was implemented – U.S. pork exports to Mexico have increased by 580 percent.

NPPC Ethanol Task Force Chairman On EPA’s Decision To Increase The Ethanol Blend Rate To 15 Percent

“The National Pork Producers Council is very concerned with the effect on America’s pork producers of raising to 15 percent the amount of corn ethanol that can be blended into gasoline, a decision the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.

“NPPC is withholding comment on raising the blend rate to E15 from its current E10 until we can consult with our economists. But any upward pressure on corn prices will have a negative effect on producers.

“Given that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Oct. 8 crop report revised down the expected yield and ending stocks of corn, we’re already seeing corn prices and the cost of raising a hog heading up.

[Corn for December delivery yesterday was up 4.2 percent from the day before, settling at $5.79 a bushel and has risen by 17 percent in the past three days. In trading this morning, prices reached a high of $5.88 a bushel. Corn was under $4 a bushel in August.

[The higher corn prices have dropped projected pork profits for 2011 to just an average of $1.19 per head, down more than $5 per head from a week ago, according to economist Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics in Adel, Iowa.]

“We don’t want a repeat of a couple of years ago when, due mostly to high feed-grain prices, pork producers lost an average of almost $24 a hog from October 2007 through March 2010, and the industry lost nearly $6 billion. Family hog farms went out of business during that time, and many producers reduced the size of their herds.”

[Spronk, who serves on NPPC’s board of directors and is chairman of its Environment Committee, is a hog and crop farmer from Edgerton, Minn.]

House Lawmakers Want GIPSA Rule Economic Analysis

House lawmakers in a letter sent late yesterday to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked that an economic analysis of the agency’s proposed rule on buying and selling livestock and poultry be completed before the regulation becomes final.

The request was applauded by the National Pork Producers Council, which noted when the rule first was issued in mid-June the lack of such an analysis and which in its public comments on the regulation will demand that one be done.

The 2008 Farm Bill authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promulgate regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act related to livestock and poultry contracts and marketing practices. The rule would be administered by USDA’s Grain
Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA).

Signed by 115 members – 68 Republicans and 47 Democrats – the House letter pointed out that the rule “is sweeping in its scope and would have major consequences in the marketing of livestock and poultry for producers and processors of all sizes. In order for Congress and the public to evaluate this rule and its implications with full transparency, a thorough economic analysis is necessary.”

“It is imperative that producers know how much the GIPSA rule will cost them,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. “Frankly, it’s unfathomable that a major regulation like this doesn’t have an analysis of its impact on the economy and jobs.”

NPPC has pointed out that the proposed rule goes well beyond the Farm Bill mandates and includes some provisions that were considered and dropped or rejected by Congress. The regulation is a “bureaucratic overreach,” the organization has said.

In a July hearing, a number of House Agriculture Committee members said USDA “overstepped its boundaries.” The majority of the panel’s lawmakers signed the Oct. 4 letter to Vilsack, which was championed by Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., Ranking Member Frank Lucas, R-Okla., Livestock Subcommittee Chairman David Scott, D-Ga., and subcommittee Ranking Member Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas. [Click here to read the letter.]

Important Pork Industry Bills Approved

The U.S. pork industry scored a couple of legislative victories today as the House of Representatives approved legislation reauthorizing a law that requires meat packers to report the prices they pay for animals and a bill that will address a shortage of veterinarians.

The National Pork Producers Council issued a press release on the measures, which the organization supports.

All The 'News' It Fits It Prints

The New York Times, long regarded as the U.S. paper of record, has had plenty to write about recently. Two Middle East wars, immigration, the slumping economy and the fifth anniversary of Katrina, to name just a few currently hot topics.

So it’s curious that, amid all that weightier news, the Gray Lady found space on its editorial page to support a draft USDA regulation on livestock sales out of the obscure Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration. (Read the editorial here if you must.)

True, the regulation gave the Times another opportunity to rail against many of its favorite farm-related evils, including big ag, modern ag, ag-related water pollution and even antibiotics given to livestock to keep them from getting sick. And, yes, the disastrous GIPSA rule is a hot topic in farm states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado.

But still … the New York Times editorializing on the GIPSA rule? On its face, it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

On the other hand, the rule appears to be in serious trouble after the recent hearing in Fort Collins, Colo., where dozens of real pork producers from around the country -- California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah -- explained just how it would affect them. Could someone on Independence Avenue have appealed to the Times for help on the besieged regulation?

We’ll never know for sure, of course. But, if true, it would be hard to miss the irony: media colluding with government over a regulation aimed at ending (alledged) collusion in livestock sales!

Asses, Elbows And Eggs

HOTH's favorite saying these days is: He doesn't know his ass from his elbow! (HOTH could use "she" and "her," but women aren't that dumb.) The quip applies well to N.Y. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof when it comes to his diatribes on animal agriculture.

He proves us right in his latest offering (read it here if you must), which is on the recent salmonella outbreak in eggs. Kristof, as is his wont, blames it all on "industrial" farming and in this case, keeping hens in cages. (He began his column with a boyhood reminiscence of chickens wandering freely on the family farm. HOTH almost cried.) He even touts organic food.

Kristof may want to read this piece that ran (unbelievably) in Time magazine. Besides, it looks as though the culprit in the current case is salmonella in the feed given to the chickens. So even Kristof's free-range birds could have produced tainted eggs.

In his column, the Times writer, of course, blames lots of other ills -- water pollution, antibiotic resistance, cancer -- on "industrial" farming.

Suffice it to say, Kristof doesn't know his ... you know the rest.

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

Our teacher asked us what our favorite animal was, and I said, "Fried chicken." She said I wasn't funny, but she couldn't have been right, everyone else in the class laughed.

My parents told me to always be truthful and honest, and I am. Fried chicken is my favorite animal. I told my dad what happened, and he said my teacher was probably a member of PETA. He said they love animals very much. I do, too. Especially chicken, pork and beef.

Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal's office. I told him what happened, and he laughed too. Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite live animal was. I told her it was chicken. She asked me why, just like she'd asked the other children. So I told her it was because you could make them into fried chicken. She sent me back to the principal's office again. He laughed, and told me not to do it again.

I don't understand. My parents taught me to be honest, but my teacher doesn't like it when I am. Today, my teacher asked us to tell her what famous person we admire most.

I told her, "Colonel Sanders."

Guess where I am now ...