With just days remaining before the comment period deadline, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) yesterday submitted its official comments on the proposed Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rule.

NPPC comments say the USDA agency “lacked authority or exceeded it on certain provisions of a proposed rule on buying and selling hogs, failed to support the need for the regulation with evidence of problems in the pork industry and didn’t consider its own studies showing that restricting contracts could harm the industry.” An economic impact study by Informa Economics estimates that the cost to the pork industry alone would amount to $333 million per year, after an initial $69 million expense.

The pork producers call the regulation a “bureaucratic overreach” and point out that GIPSA lacks the authority to declare that no showing of injury to competition is necessary to establish a violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act. NPPC asked that GIPSA withdraw the portions of the proposed rule that will have an immediate and detrimental impact on the pork industry. It also requested a thorough analysis of the affect on the pork producers of any new regulation.

“As proposed, the GIPSA rule is bad for farmers and ranchers, bad for consumers and bad for rural America,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. “We’d like the agency to rewrite the rule, sticking to the mandates Congress gave it in the 2008 Farm Bill.”