Beef prices have plateaued at 12 percent prompting President Trump to call on the Department of Justice to review the contracts between 4 major meat companies- including Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef. According to the report, Antitrust regulators have looked into the contracts used by beef companies to acquire cattle, from ranchers which reference a pricing benchmark that some ranchers have claimed is manipulated, according to a recent report.
“The DOJ will look at any anti-trusts or anti-competitive practices. We don’t know the nature of the investigation, what specifically what they’re looking for but there needs to be government oversight, there needs to be an opportunity that there are fair market conditions for ranchers and consumers in these types of processes.” Gary Joiner with the Texas Farm Bureau said.
He says the beef industry has long time had a consolidated system where a small percentage of companies have control of 85 percent of the beef industry. In addition, he says only 1.5 percent of the population grows the food and fiber that America relies on.
Joiner says the amount of cattle has reached a 75-year low. “That’s because of drought economic pressures where some cattle have been liquidated or sold and not rebuilt. That’s going to take about another year or longer for some of those cattle numbers to recover to more normal levels. Joiner said.
Additionally, the report says leading beef processors were the subject of an investigation that began in Trump's first term and continued through Biden's term but was closed by the Justice Department weeks before it launched its most recent probe on similar grounds.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' data from the March release the consumer price index showed that beef and veal prices were up just over 12 percent over the last year. Within that category, ground beef prices are up 11 percent while prices for beef steaks have risen over 15 percent over that period.