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Nelson Urges Congress to Reauthorize Price Reporting Program

Date: Oct. 5, 2005
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Agriculture and Food


NELSON URGES CONGRESS TO REAUTHORIZE PRICE REPORTING PROGRAM

With the successful mandatory price reporting program for livestock now expired due to inaction and threatening price stability in the livestock market, Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson is leading a bipartisan coalition of Senators to extend the program so that livestock markets and prices remain stable.

"Livestock producers find themselves at risk from price fluctuations due to a lack of market information," said Senator Nelson. "Both the House and Senate have passed extensions to the livestock mandatory price reporting program, but its time for the conference committee to act so that the program can be restarted and market stability maintained."

On September 16, Nelson and a bipartisan group of five other Senators signed a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture committee seeking conference committee action on the extension of the Mandatory Price Reporting (MPR) provisions of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999, which was set to expire on September 30. Due to the inaction of the conference committee, the Act has expired and the program discontinued. The issue was first brought to Senator Nelson's attention by Nebraska producers in early September.

Joining Nelson on the letter were Senators Jim Talent (MO), Craig Thomas (WY), Norm Coleman MN), Richard Lugar (IN), and Jeff Bingaman (NM).

"Time is of the essence. To ensure the long-term certainty of timely market pricing information to livestock producers and processors, reauthorizing the MPR provisions for five years … would be prudent," the Senators wrote.

According to the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, the Nebraska Unicameral in 1999 enacted the Competitive Livestock Markets Act, which assigns the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) the responsibility for dispersing livestock price data in absence of a federal program. Without extension of the Livestock Price Reporting Act, NDA will need to develop a state livestock price reporting system -- which would be a costly expenditure for the State.

http://bennelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=247028&&

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