Amid high beef prices, Trump orders probe of meatpackers

A Justice Department investigation into the country’s largest meatpacking companies for collusion and price fixing has the potential to reshape the cattle and beef industries. But past efforts to break the companies’ hold have gone nowhere.

- KEVIN DRAPER

The White House called for an examination into the meatpacking companies’ practices after President Donald Trump, ina post on social media Friday, accused them of artificially inflating prices and jeopardising the country’s food supply. A White House news release specifically named JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef as targets of the investigation. The companies collectively slaughter 85% of the country’s cattle and a majority of its hogs.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said an investigation, headed by the Justice Department's antitrust division, was underway.

Ranchers have long complained that the big four meatpackers hold undue power. They have pointed to data that shows that retail beef prices rose over much of the last decade even as the price they received for their cattle fell, with middlemen like slaughterhouses taking in more of the profits.

“We welcome this investigation to ensure that cattle producers receive competitive prices for their cattle, and that consumers pay prices set by a competitive market rather than a monopolistic one,’ Bill Bullard, CEO ofthe Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fund, said in a statement Friday.

JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef did not respond to requests for comment. The Meat Institute, an industry lobbying group, said beefpackers were losing money and that “market transactions are transparent.”