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45–064 PDF 2008

S. HRG. 110–569 

CONCENTRATION IN AGRICULTURE AND AN 

EXAMINATION OF THE JBS/SWIFT ACQUISITIONS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST, 

COMPETITION POLICY AND CONSUMER RIGHTS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MAY 7, 2008 

Serial No. J–110–91 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware 

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

JON KYL, Arizona 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

BRUCE A. COHEN, Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

MICHAEL O’NEILL, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST, COMPETITION POLICY AND CONSUMER RIGHTS

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin, Chairman 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JEFFREY MILLER, Chief Counsel 

PETER LEVITAS, Republican Chief Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Page 

Grassley, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa ..................... 2 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 186 

Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., a U.S. Senator from the State of Utah ............................ 4 

Kohl, Hon. Herbert, a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin ....................... 1 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 195 

WITNESSES 

Balto, David A., Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Washington, 

D.C. ........................................................................................................................ 25

Batista, Wesley M., Chief Executive Officer, North America, JBS Swift and 

Company, Greeley, Colorado ............................................................................... 17 

Bullard, Bill, Chief Executive Officer, Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, 

United Stockgrowers of America, Billings, Montana ........................................ 20 

Carstensen, Peter C., Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, 

Madison, Wisconsin .............................................................................................. 6 

Feuz, Dillon M., Professor, Department of Economics, Utah State University, 

Logan, Utah .......................................................................................................... 22 

Hunt, Steven D., Chief Executive Officer, Premium Beef, Ltd., Kansas City, 

Missouri ................................................................................................................ 19 

Ross, Douglas, Special Counsel for Agriculture, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. ..................................................................... 5 

Stumo, Michael, Legal Counsel, Organization for Competitive Markets, Lincoln, Nebraska ...................................................................................................... 24 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

Responses of David Balto to questions submitted by Senators Kohl and Grassley .......................................................................................................................... 34 

Responses of Wesley Batista to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, Hatch, 

Grassley and Feingold ......................................................................................... 39 

Responses of Bill Bullard to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, Grassley 

and Feingold ......................................................................................................... 57 

Responses of Peter Carstensen to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, 

Grassley and Feingold ......................................................................................... 72 

Responses of Dillon Feuz to questions submitted by Senators Kohl and Hatch 78 

Responses of Steve Hunt to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, Hatch, 

Grassley and Feingold ......................................................................................... 86 

Responses of Douglas Ross to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, Grassley 

and Feingold ......................................................................................................... 91 

Responses of Michael Stumo to questions submitted by Senators Kohl, Grassley and Feingold ................................................................................................... 105 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Balto, David A., Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Washington, 

D.C., statement .................................................................................................... 115 

Batista, Wesley M., Chief Executive Officer, North America, JBS Swift and 

Company, Greeley, Colorado, statement ............................................................ 128 

Bullard, Bill, Chief Executive Officer, Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, 

United Stockgrowers of America, Billings, Montana, statement ..................... 131 

Carstensen, Peter C., Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, 

Madison, Wisconsin, statement ........................................................................... 166 

Page

IV 

Feuz, Dillon M., Professor, Department of Economics, Utah State University, 

Logan, Utah, statement ....................................................................................... 177 

Hunt, Steven D., Chief Executive Officer, Premium Beef, Ltd., Kansas City, 

Missouri, statement ............................................................................................. 191 

Ross, Douglas, Special Counsel for Agriculture, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., statement .................................................. 197 

Stumo, Michael, Legal Counsel, Organization for Competitive Markets, Lincoln, Nebraska, statement and attachments ..................................................... 212 

U.S. Senators, Washington, D.C., joint letter ........................................................ 227 

(1) 

CONCENTRATION IN AGRICULTURE AND AN 

EXAMINATION OF THE JBS/SWIFT ACQUISITIONS 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2008 

U.S. SENATE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST, COMPETITION POLICY AND

CONSUMER RIGHTS, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., in room 

SD–226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Herb Kohl, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Kohl, Feingold, Hatch, and Grassley. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HERB KOHL, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN 

Chairman KOHL. Good afternoon. We will call this hearing to 

order at this time. Today we meet to examine the rising tide of consolidation in agriculture. Recent years have witnessed an enormous 

transformation in the agriculture industry. Disparity in market 

power between family farmers and large agribusiness firms all too 

often leaves the individual farmer and rancher with little choice regarding who will buy their products and under what terms. In this 

hearing, we will focus on just the latest example of that trend: JBS/ 

Swift’s plans to acquire two other meatpacking firms, a transaction 

that would reduce the number of major competitors in this industry 

from five down to just three. 

In 1890, our Nation’s fundamental antitrust law, the Sherman 

Act, was passed in large part as a response to the consolidation in 

the meatpacking industry. We now appear to have gone full circle 

as the JBS/Swift acquisitions will leave the meatpacking industry 

even more concentrated than it was a century ago. If approved, the 

JBS/Swift acquisitions will increase the market share of the top 

four firms to 91 percent. JBS/Swift will also acquire Five Rivers, 

the Nation’s largest feedlot, marketing 2 million cattle annually. 

This threatens to give JBS/Swift a very strong lever over the Nation’s cattle supply while leaving independent ranchers with little 

bargaining power. By reducing the number of major buyers for 

ranchers’ cattle from five down to three, and in some regions even 

two, this deal will give the remaining beef processors enormous 

buying power. With little choice to whom to sell their cattle, ranchers will increasingly be left in a ‘‘take it or leave it’’ position. 

2 

We should be equally concerned with effects on millions of beef 

consumers across the country in this era of rising food prices. Will 

only three major national sellers of beef be enough to ensure a competitive market for supermarkets, small grocery stores, and restaurants? Or will consumers need to go on a diet while the giant 

meatpacking firms grow ever fatter? 

And so I urge the Justice Department to undertake a close and 

serious examination of the effects of the JBS/Swift acquisitions on 

both ranchers and consumers. Unfortunately, it appears that the 

Justice Department’s antitrust enforcement efforts, both in the ag 

sector and generally, have been much too weak and passive in recent years. In the opinion of many experts, the Justice Department 

has often failed to take effective action as merger after merger in 

the pork, milk, and seed markets have sharply increased concentration as well as reducing competition. Antitrust investigations in the 

dairy industry have languished, with no resolution. While the Justice Department sits largely on the sidelines, agriculture concentration rises, and food prices rise. 

Weak antitrust enforcement, of course, has not been limited to 

agriculture. Previously unthinkable mergers among direct competitors in many other highly concentrated industries affecting millions 

of consumers have been approved by the Justice Department, often 

over the reported objections of career staff. The most recent example was the Department’s approval of the XM/Sirius merger, a 

merger to monopoly in the satellite radio industry. This is not the 

time for the Government to take a cramped or limited view of antitrust enforcement. In this era of rising prices and ever increasing 

consolidation, the need for vigorous enforcement of our antitrust 

laws has never been greater, in agriculture and in all other key 

sectors of our economy. 

Millions of consumers are depending on aggressive antitrust enforcement, and now is not the time for our antitrust enforcers to 

be asleep at the switch. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Kohl appears as a submission for the record.] 

I would like to call upon my colleague Senator Grassley now for 

his comments. 

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF IOWA 

Senator GRASSLEY. Thank you very much, Chairman Kohl, for 

calling this hearing. I requested that you do this hearing and you 

responded within 24 hours, a very positive response, and this is the 

result of your response. I appreciate it very much. I also appreciate 

the opportunity to give my opening statement. At this very hour, 

2:30, the Conference Committee on Agriculture is reconvening farm 

bill negotiations, and so I am going to have to go to that. It is my 

intent to come back, but if I do not get back, I will submit questions for an answer in writing. Unfortunately, you never know 

whether those meetings are going to take 5 minutes or 5 hours. So 

that is why I will have to go. 

I requested this hearing because of widespread concerns about 

increased competition in agriculture as well as concerns raised 

about the proposed acquisition of National Beef Packing, Smithfield 

3 

Beef, and Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding by JBS acquisitions. 

It is important that the Judiciary Committee review positive and 

constructive solutions to the agriculture competition concerns as 

well as potentially problematic mergers, such as this JBS transaction. 

For well over a decade, I have had serious concerns about increased consolidation in agriculture, and, of course, not just as it 

affects farmers, but the impact upon all of rural America. I share 

the concerns of many family farmers and independent producers 

that the agriculture industry has consolidated to the point where 

many of these smaller market participants do not have equal access to fair and competitive markets. I share the concern of many 

in the agriculture industry that large agribusinesses are in a better 

position to engage in anticompetitive and predatory business practices. 

Senator Kohl and I introduced S. 1759, the Agriculture Competition Enhancement Act, in response to concerns about excessive concentration in agriculture. I was disappointed that we were not able 

to include some version of this bill as part of the agriculture farm 

bill, but I hope that we will be able to discuss the legislation today 

and hear witnesses’ views on it. I would like to see this bill move 

through this Committee, the Judiciary Committee, because I truly 

believe that it will address concerns about agriculture mergers. 

The JBS merger is a part of this growing ‘‘bigger is better’’ trend 

in agriculture. I wrote to the Justice Department Antitrust Division to urge a careful review of this transaction and to consider 

thoroughly the projected impacts on the beef industry. JBS is the 

world’s largest beef packer and the third largest processor in the 

United States. National Beef Packing and Smithfield Beef Group 

are the fourth and fifth largest beef processors here. If this transaction were to be approved, JBS would control approximately 32 

percent of the beef-processing market share, killing far more animals than Cargill Meats or Tyson Foods. 

I am concerned that the proposed JBS merger could severely reduce the already limited number of buyers for the commodities of 

small and independent beef producers. The transaction could leave 

producers minimal selling options throughout large geographic 

areas. It would allow JBS to control the largest share of the beef 

market and potentially decrease product choice and increase product prices for the consumers of America. 

I spent a lot of time focused on the independent producer, but 

with the rising costs of food worldwide, we all ought to be particularly interested in hearing the potential effects on our customers in 

the grocery aisle. 

I am not the only one that has this issue with this proposed 

merger. Small independent producers, family farmers, and other 

agriculture groups share my concerns about the proposed JBS 

transaction and increasing agribusiness consolidation. Expanded 

packer ownership, exclusive contracting, and captive supply are adversely impacting their ability to compete in the marketplace. They 

share my concerns about reduced market opportunities, anticompetitive and predatory business practices, and a result, fewer 

choices and higher costs for American consumers. 

4 

So, Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that we will be able to have representatives from JBS and National Beef tell us what they believe 

will be the benefits to this transaction. I am also pleased that we 

have industry folks and agricultural antitrust experts here to give 

us their view, both on the transaction as well as what they see 

coming on in the future in the agriculture industry and how we 

will be impacted by less competition. 

I very much appreciate once again Chairman Kohl agreeing to 

hold this hearing. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Grassley appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you for being here, Senator Grassley. 

We now turn to the Committee’s Ranking Member, Senator 

Orrin Hatch. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF UTAH 

Senator HATCH. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is always a 

pleasure to be with you here today, and I appreciate that you have 

called this hearing on agriculture consolidation in JBS/Swift’s proposed acquisitions. 

Agriculture consolidation has long been one of the most important questions that we face in antitrust law. In fact, one could say 

that our Nation’s antitrust laws were born from the concerns of 

farmers and ranchers that improper market power was being employed by large agricultural processors and the railroads. 

The antitrust ramifications of agriculture consolidation are still 

a very important topic today. The meatpacking industry has had 

some very tough times over the past several years. Perhaps most 

dramatic was the 2003 BSE incident which led to an overreaction 

by many of our trading partners and the almost overnight collapse 

of our most important beef export markets. 

In addition, there has been enormous consolidation in the agriculture industry over the past 30 years, especially in livestock markets. For example, according to the Congressional Research Service, in 1985, the four largest meatpackers accounted for only 39 

percent of the cattle- packing industry. By 2007, that number had 

grown to 71 percent. Similarly, in 1985, the four largest swine 

packers represented 32 percent of the market. In 2005, that share 

had risen to 63 percent. 

The effects of this consolidation are not only being felt in the 

packing business. The number of American farms producing swine 

has fallen dramatically from 667,000 in 1980 to 67,000 in 2005. 

Now, this consolidation has also had a major impact on theories 

of the proper enforcement of antitrust law. Currently, there is a 

disagreement between two groups of legal thought. The first group 

believes market consolidation and vertical integration undermine 

the smaller livestock producers by reducing their potential to use 

the cash or the spot market. The second group argues antitrust law 

is designed to maintain or create competitive markets for consumers. They believe it is improper to regulate an industry through 

antitrust law because one of the market’s competitors is suffering 

due to otherwise legitimate competition and business practices. ArVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
5 

ticulating these different views will be one of the subjects of today’s 

first panel. 

Our second panel will explore the specifics of consolidation with 

a discussion of JBS/Swift and Company’s proposed acquisition of 

National Beef and Smithfield Beef. If the transaction is approved, 

only three major meatpackers will remain from the current five. 

Specifically, JBS/Swift will control 32 percent of the market, Tyson 

24.8 percent, and Cargill 21.6 percent. It should also be noted that 

JBS/Swift is making these acquisitions when most experts agree 

that there is overcapacity in the packer market. 

So how does JBS/Swift intend to profit from its investment? I 

have been informed that JBS/Swift intends to promote the export 

of American beef vigorously. If so, the acquisition is well timed to 

exploit the Korean Government’s recent decision to lift many of its 

remaining importation barriers imposed on American beef, something that I have been very concerned about for a long time. It remains to be seen if this business model will succeed. However, JBS/ 

Swift has recently acquired meatpackers in Argentina, Australia, 

and Italy. 

After the company’s acquisition of Swift, to its credit it did follow 

through on its promise to expand operations and to hire additional 

workers. However, many have antitrust concerns about this transaction. So I look forward to exploring these issues in greater detail 

during the hearing. 

Again, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this important hearing, and I look forward to paying attention to everything I can with regard to it. Thank you. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you very much, Senator Hatch. 

We would now like to introduce the members of our first panel. 

Our first witness will be Douglas Ross. Mr. Ross is a Special Counsel for Agriculture in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department 

of Justice. Mr. Ross has also served in the Office of Policy Development at the Department of Justice. 

The next witness on this panel will be Peter Carstensen. Professor Carstensen teaches at the University of Wisconsin Law 

School, where he focuses on antitrust law and competition policy. 

Prior to his position at the University of Wisconsin, Professor 

Carstensen was an attorney at the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. 

We thank you both for appearing at our Subcommittee hearing 

today, and if you will rise and raise your right hand and repeat 

after me. Do you affirm that the testimony you are about to give 

will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so 

help you God? 

Mr. ROSS. I do. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. I do. 

Chairman KOHL. We thank you both for being here. At this time, 

Mr. Ross, we will take your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS ROSS, SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR AGRICULTURE, ANTITRUST DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. ROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Antitrust Division’s antitrust enforcement 

6 

record in the important agriculture sector of our economy. I have 

a longer written statement that I request be made a part of the 

record. 

Chairman KOHL. That will be done. 

Mr. ROSS. But I would like to begin with a brief statement now. 

The Department of Justice is committed to maintaining an active 

involvement in the agricultural sector and to protecting competition there through aggressive antitrust enforcement, as warranted. 

The Department takes very seriously the concerns expressed by agricultural producers about competitive problems. 

In antitrust analysis and enforcement, the Department carefully 

considers market power issues, both on the sell side, which is often 

seen as monopoly, and on the buy side, described as monopsony. 

The Department hears and takes into account monopsony or buyside market power as a particular concern in merger enforcement 

for agricultural producers who often sell their products to large agribusinesses. The Department has brought a number of enforcement actions in the agricultural sector in recent years and has undertaken special outreach to the agricultural community. We have 

for many years regularly consulted the Department of Agriculture 

to obtain the benefit of their expertise in our agriculture work. 

The Department’s legal authority in this area is the antitrust 

law. Other agencies have other legal authority, and agriculture policy is far bigger than antitrust. In our area of authority, we are 

constantly on the lookout for possible antitrust violations and will 

not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action when warranted. 

My statement demonstrates that we have been active in enforcing the antitrust laws in the agriculture sector, having filed several 

important cases to remedy anticompetitive effects that were likely 

to result from proposed mergers and acquisitions and to stop collusive, anticompetitive practices that adversely affected farmers and 

competition in this key sector of the economy. 

I look forward to your questions about our work. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ross appears as a submission for 

the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Mr. Ross. 

Mr. Carstensen? 

STATEMENT OF PETER C. CARSTENSEN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, 

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL, MADISON, WISCONSIN 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. He was able to get through that in only 21⁄2

minutes. No professor is going to be able to top that performance. 

I am truly honored to be offered this opportunity to express my 

views on the state of antitrust enforcement in markets related to 

agriculture. I have a longer statement, which I hope will be included in the record. 

Chairman KOHL. We will do it. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. Thank you. 

In a nutshell, the Government agencies charged with enforcing 

antitrust law have repeatedly failed to challenge or to remedy competitive problems that confront American agriculture. The most 

conspicuous failure has come in merger enforcement where a series 

7 

of decisions either not to challenge mergers or settle for weak, even 

anticompetitive, remedies has resulted in increased concentration 

on both the input and the output side of agriculture. 

The American farmer is being caught in an economic vise. When 

they seek to buy various inputs they need—seed, fertilizer, equipment, herbicides—they face an increasingly concentrated markets 

and exploitive strategies by producers. When they attempt to sell 

their products, especially, I think, in the dairy, meat, and grain 

areas, they have only a very limited number of buyers who use 

their buyer power to drive down the prices paid for these products. 

What I would like to do is to give you the highlights of several 

of the lessons that I think and examples that I think highlight this 

point. I want to start with the concerns that Senator Grassley expressed in particular about the pork industry. Doug Ross says on 

page 5 of his written statement that mergers that increase market 

power violate Section 7, and so I want to use the pork industry as 

an example where there has been a failure to do this. 

Smithfield bought Farmland in about 2002 or 2003, and has recently been allowed to buy Premium Standard Brands. First lesson: 

Buyer power already exists. The RTI’s study of livestock markets 

done for GIPSA found that there was statistically significant buyer 

power in hogs in that period 2002 to 2005, that is, during the period when the acquisition of Farmland occurred. But what is important is that the PSB merger, the acquisition of PSB necessarily increased buyer power to the detriment of farmers, yet the Department of Justice raised no objection, ignored the empirical analysis, 

and in its statement justifying its failure to sue, it made inaccurate 

factual statements. 

The second lesson—and it is a very important one—is that buyer 

power—and this comes from the RTI study. Buyer power arises 

from much lower levels of concentration when measured by the 

HHI index number than one would expect to predict seller power 

on the seller side of markets. That is, the concentration was in the 

1,000 to 1,300 level in this period when the RTI study found the 

existence of buyer power. It is an important lesson that has been 

totally ignored by our law enforcers. 

As to milk, Mr. Ross’s statement describes the theory of the Dean 

settlement, done without litigation, no—there is no consent decree. 

There is no opportunity to comment on this. The theory was when 

Suiza bought Dean that there would be a divestiture and no exclusive dealings. Since then, DFA, Dairy Farmers of America, has become associated with both the successor to the Dean-Suiza facilities, also has linked to Hood, and has managed to get exclusive 

dealing contracts. There is—and I think Senator Kohl referenced 

this in his comments—an ongoing Justice Department investigation of many years’ standing of a number of these bad business 

practices. Apparently, nobody has informed Mr. Ross of all the 

problems that came out of this consent decree. 

I have written some hostile comments about the Monsanto-Delta 

and Pine Land settlement, which, again, results, it seems to me, 

in some very unfortunate results. There are several other comments about that. I will not elaborate further on that. 

We know that the next panel is going to deal a lot more with the 

beef industry. What I want to emphasize—and it is clear in Mr. 

8 

Bullard’s testimony—the Justice Department has known about a 

number of anticompetitive, apparently collusive or monopolistic 

practices in that industry for a number of years. They are well documented, and they have done nothing. 

So the bottom line here is that we have a passive and inactive 

antitrust enforcement process that has resulted in increased concentration, harms to producers of agricultural products, and, of 

course, harms then to consumers. 

What can Congress do? Because you, unfortunately, cannot bring 

the lawsuits, which I would love to have you do. 

First, I think hearings like this do deliver a message to Mr. Ross, 

and I hope he is going to take it back to the Justice Department. 

Second, I think your staff can do more to ask for confidential 

briefings on some of these decisions, and you yourselves can attend 

those briefings so that you are better able to understand why they 

are not doing the things that they ought to be doing. 

You could also get a GAO study of some of these key decisions 

in terms of what happened afterwards, because I think if you look 

at pork, if you look at dairy, you look at some of these other industries, you are going to see the actual harms. 

Finally, you know, Doug is my old sparring partner. We have 

done these kinds of shows across the country. He is a dedicated 

civil servant, and he comes down here and he tries his best to justify what his masters are doing. The problem is he was brought in 

to be a more focused person, really to engage the issues of agriculture, to make sure that the Department of Justice actually understood things. And, sadly, it is just clear that those who actually 

make the decisions have not gotten the message. 

Therefore, I think it is really time to change the institutional and 

legal framework for evaluating mergers and anticompetitive conduct in agricultural markets. I think the Grassley-Kohl bill, the Agricultural Competition Enhancement Act, S. 1759, is a really necessary step in that direction. I congratulate you, Senator Kohl, for 

being a sponsor of that legislation. It is a great contribution. 

Farmers need workably competitive markets. They need a kind 

of antitrust enforcement that will control both the structure of 

those markets and the conduct that is allowed to occur. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carstensen appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Professor Carstensen. 

Mr. Ross, we often hear from farmers and ranchers that they 

have little bargaining power in comparison to the largest agribusiness conglomerates. Many of them claim that the Justice Department has not fulfilled its responsibility to prevent anticompetitive mergers and practices in the agriculture sector of the economy. 

Do you believe that the farmers’ concerns about increasing levels 

of consolidation among agribusiness firms are warranted? And if 

so, why has the Justice Department permitted these consolidations 

to take place? 

Mr. ROSS. Senator, we hear the same concerns about market 

power, and we take them very seriously. In fact, they have been 

important parts of each of the investigations that we have done, 

and I point, for example, to the Cargill-Continental matter in 

which the issue of market power was the key one. 

9 

We did an analysis and established that in nine regional markets, the buyer power of the merged firm would be anticompetitive. 

As a result, our relief required that ten divestitures of port and 

grain elevators be done in order to preserve competitive alternatives for farmers to sell their grain and soybeans. 

Chairman KOHL. Well, Professor, what is your view of what you 

have just heard? Are farmers and ranchers’ concerns warranted? 

And in your opinion, has the Justice Department done enough to 

stop these consolidations, especially among food processors? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. I think the concerns are very much warranted, 

and as I referenced that RTI study in the pork industry, which is 

the most recent confirmation that we have very serious problems 

of buyer power that are being increased. And if you go back and 

look at the Justice Department’s explanation for why they did not 

object to the Smithfield-Premium Standard Brand merger, they announced that finished hogs could be hauled 400 miles from North 

Carolina to Kentucky for processing and, therefore, the farmers of 

North Carolina were at no risk of being exploited—this in the face 

of data that shows that they are at about a 10-percent discount in 

North Carolina whenever there is a full supply of hogs in the market because it is costly to haul your hogs anywhere. 

And I think the Continental-Cargill merger is another example 

of minimalist enforcement. It was a clearly bad merger. They did 

the least that they possibly could do. We have not seen a good followup on what the consequences of that merger are. Anecdotally, 

when I talk to grain farmers, what I hear is we went from having 

two or possibly three buyers to, at most, two buyers, and in many 

more areas we are seeing only one buyer for our corn, for our soybeans, et cetera. 

This is one of the things that has made ethanol really interesting 

because those plants do create a different kind of competition right 

now in corn markets. It does not do much for soybeans. It does not 

do much for wheat, but it does change the dynamic because there 

are competitive buyers in the marketplace. 

So we really need more focus on this, and, again, something I 

said earlier, the analysis of buyer power is different. Buyers are 

different from sellers in terms of when they get leverage in the 

market, what kinds of market shares give you leverage. As a buyer, 

you are the decider. You are the decisionmaker with respect to 

whether or not you buy. That creates power at much lower levels 

of concentration. We simply have not seen from the Justice Department any recognition of that inherent economic fact. 

Chairman KOHL. Professor Carstensen, at this time, as you 

know, millions of consumers all across the United States are suffering from rising food prices in many basic commodities. Do you 

believe that the increasing concentration we are witnessing in agriculture is a big cause of the higher food prices paid by consumers? 

And if that is true, do these higher prices find their way back into 

the farmers and ranchers’ hands? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. The first part is, yes, the concentration has two 

levels. It has an effect downstream—or I should say upstream on 

the farmers, and it has an effect downstream on the consumers. 

That is, both ends of this process are subject to exploitation by 

lower prices to farmers, higher prices to consumers. The best docuVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
10 

mentation of that comes from Professor Cotterill, in a hearing I 

think before this Committee a few years ago, involving New England dairy products. And, again, Mr. Bullard’s written statement 

for the Committee has a good deal of the documentation that shows 

that increasing spread between what is being paid at the farm 

gate, which is constant or declining, and what is being charged to 

consumers. So what we are seeing is, no, it is not coming back to 

the farm gate. It is not coming back to the farmer. But the price 

to the consumer is going up. It is getting caught in those two levels 

of concentration. 

One of the things I emphasized in my written statement is concentration at retail grocery markets, which is really where you get 

the leverage over the consumer, and then concentration at the production level. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you. 

Mr. Ross, what is your view? Does reduced competition among 

agribusiness companies inevitably lead to higher prices? And isn’t 

strong antitrust enforcement very important to prevent such loss of 

competition? 

Mr. ROSS. Senator, the antitrust laws could not be more important to protecting consumer prices, and effective competition leads 

to all kinds of benefits, like better quality of products, greater innovation, and the ability of farmers as consumers as well as producers to benefit from a competitive economy. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you. 

Senator Hatch? 

Senator HATCH. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Professor Carstensen, you have written, ‘‘Strategic behavior by 

market-dominating firms has weakened or eliminated the open 

market process that in turn gave agricultural producers the freedom and flexibility to be genuinely independent entrepreneurs.’’ 

Now, some think that may be nostalgia for a bygone era. Has not 

the Department of Justice merely been fulfilling its mandate by 

only taking action when it believes that a competitive market happens to be in jeopardy? Or, put another way, are you not advocating the Department become a regulator, ensuring survival of 

small producers, when the Department’s responsibilities under the 

law will be to ensure competitive markets, not the competitors 

themselves? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. My father was a historian of agriculture, so 

maybe I have got some residual nostalgia genes. 

Let’s be clear about this. Markets are going to change. What is 

an efficient level of production is going to change. The benefit of 

workably competitive markets is those changes are driven by economic fundamentals, not by strategic behavior. 

What I was concerned with in the passage you quoted was the 

kinds of strategic behavior that adversely affects the functioning of 

the market and favors some players in the market not based on 

their inherent efficiencies. The most recent USDA studies, for example, in pork show that small pork producers, hog producers, I 

guess I should say—have the same level of efficiency that very 

large ones do. The problem is going to be market access, finding 

fair rules. And if we are going to go to a contract world—I am not 

opposed to that, necessarily. If contracts are what we do, then we 

11 

need proper rules for the contract market so that, again, it is fair, 

open, and efficient. And efficient is key here because we do want 

to have those markets be dynamic, to change with the changing 

technology. 

Senator HATCH. Well, on a related point, you wrote a Law Review article entitled ‘‘Concentration and the Destruction of Competition in Agricultural Markets: The Case for Change in Public 

Policy.’’ This article was described by the National Agricultural 

Law Center as arguing in favor of using antitrust law to protect 

independent farmers. 

Now, there has been a tremendous amount of consolidation in 

the livestock markets. However, according to the Congressional Research Service, ranchers and farmers that hold fewer than 100 

cows still control half of the market. Now, the top 30 feedlots only 

control 40 percent of the cattle on feed. In fact, the USDA believes 

that there are more than 88,000 lower-capacity feedlots in operation today. 

Now, my question would be: Why should the Government interfere in a marketplace where half of the cow/calf businesses appear 

to be held by smaller farms and there is more than an ample number of smaller feedlots? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. Well, if we were talking about a merger among 

feedlots, I would agree with you. I do not see an antitrust issue 

there. But we are talking about mergers among the buyers from 

those feedlots that are going to reduce the numbers from five to 

three and are going to create, I think—and certainly this is consistent with all the other data that we have—going to create substantially more buyer power. 

As the next panel is going to focus, I think, much more on the 

specifics of the beef industry, the problem is access to the slaughter 

facility. The problem is the terms and conditions under which those 

feedlots get to sell. 

We have seen a cyclical long-term decline in the number of 

feedlots that exist and in the number of cattle that are being put 

on feed, and what that tells us generally is that we are looking at 

the kind of situation that looks a lot like there is exploitation of 

monopsony power or oligopsony power, that is, buyer power on 

these downstream—or, I am sorry, upstream suppliers. 

One of the important points that your data makes fundamentally 

is that you can be a 100-head feeder or a 10,000-head feeder, and 

it looks like you can compete in the market as long as you have 

access to the meat processors, to the cattle slaughter facilities. 

What we are focused on here today is a merger at that buying 

level. That is the place where the problem will exist for all of the 

different feeders that you are identifying. 

Senator HATCH. OK. Mr. Ross, I will just ask a question of you. 

During the previous administration, Cargill acquired Continental 

in the already concentrated grain trader market. Specifically, the 

number of grain traders was reduced from four to three. However, 

the Department of Justice insisted that the combined Cargill- Continental sell 10 percent of its operations to a competitor. Why then 

in 2003 did the Department of Justice decline to take action on the 

Smithfield purchase of Farmland Food’s pork-processing plants? 

12 

Was this also not a highly concentrated market? And why the difference in enforcement actions? Just so we understand better. 

Mr. ROSS. Thank you, Senator. We welcome opportunities to be 

more transparent about the bases on which we decide to enforce or 

not, where appropriate. 

In the Cargill matter, we did extensive analysis of the market, 

including talking to many experts in the area, including farmers, 

and our analysis showed that there would be the kind of anticompetitive consequences, that is, a substantial lessening of competition in a market, in nine regional markets. And, therefore, we 

required relief of the sort that we have described. 

By contrast, in the pork matter involving Smithfield- Farmland, 

we did a similar kind of analysis, and the facts showed a different 

result. We looked at the procurement areas for each of Farmland’s 

plants and how many packers would buy hogs in the same procurement areas and the slaughter capacity of each of the competing 

packers. Our conclusion was that neither Smithfield nor Cargill, 

which you will recall was one of the potential buyers there, would 

make as much as 30 percent of the live hog purchases if it had acquired Farmland’s assets. And our conclusion was that there would 

still be at least six competing packers where the acquirer had competing plants. So we thought that was a basis on which not to take 

action because there was no anticompetitive result. 

Senator HATCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Senator Hatch. 

I would like to say that we are going to, as a result of our concern about these mergers and their impact on higher food prices, 

we are asking the GAO to make a study to look at whether or not 

there really is a correlation between these two critical factors. 

Professor Carstensen, Senator Grassley and I have written a bill 

that would shift the burden of proof so that merging parties in agriculture mergers have to justify that their mergers do not harm 

competition rather than the other way around, which is as it is 

now. Do you support this idea? And if you do, tell us why. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. I think it is a very good idea because it really 

requires not just the vague waving of hands in the Justice Department office saying that there are going to be no harms, but actual 

proof in a court of law where the defendant merging parties have 

to come in and genuinely justify the non-anticompetitive implication of the merger, and especially as the court decisions have accumulated of late, courts have really been putting an extraordinary 

burden on the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to establish that any particular merger will tomorrow result 

in serious harm. 

The statute actually only calls for evidence that the merger may 

substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. So 

that this restores in many respects the classic statement of what 

the standard should be, and I think it is a wonderful idea. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Ross, I assume you agree. 

Mr. ROSS. Senator, surprisingly enough, Professor Carstensen 

has also referred to me as his ‘‘punching bag,’’ and here again we 

will disagree. 

The Antitrust Division is satisfied that the burden of proof in all 

merger enforcement actions should be the same, whether for agriVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
13 

culture or any other part of the economy, that it works effectively. 

And I am aware of no case in which we would decline to take a 

case to court because of the burden of proof. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you. 

Senator Feingold? 

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I get to my 

statement and questions, let me specifically welcome Professor 

Carstensen. I have know him and been friends for many years with 

him and his wife, Carol, who is a distinguished and long-serving 

school board member in Madison. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. Just finished. 

Senator FEINGOLD. I am aware of that. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. After 18 years. 

Senator FEINGOLD. I read the paper that comes to my door there, 

and she did a wonderful job. It is good to see you, and I thank you 

and all the other witnesses for appearing this afternoon. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding the hearing to shed light 

on an important issue for farmers and consumers. Before I talk 

about agriculture specifically, I want to note the overall troubling 

state of concentration across multiple sectors of the economy. Over 

the past few years, consolidation and related competition concerns 

have increased in a variety of areas, including freight railroads, 

food retailers, and radio stations, just to mention a few. 

Just 2 weeks ago, this same Subcommittee chaired by my distinguished colleague from Wisconsin considered proposed mega mergers among airlines, and now we are turning to a merger that would 

reduce the number of major beef meatpackers from five to three. 

This growing concentration raises serious questions about the Department of Justice’s enforcement of existing laws, as well as the 

adequacy of those laws to ensure fair, open, and equitable markets. 

Increased consolidation and market concentration are serious 

problems for agricultural producers throughout the Nation. As I 

travel around our home State of Wisconsin, and as the Chairman 

knows, these issues are consistently raised by farmers and growers. 

With respect to the proposed JBS/Swift acquisitions, it is important to my constituents that the facilities in Wisconsin remain 

operational and that there is no loss of jobs. I also have serious 

concerns that the combination of the third, fourth, and fifth largest 

beef meatpackers will significantly reduce the number of potential 

cattle buyers and as a result depress prices. While Wisconsin is not 

the leader in beef cattle production, the prices for these animals 

form the basis for the prices paid for culled dairy cows and could, 

therefore, have a significant impact on the bottom line of thousands 

of Wisconsin’s family dairy farmers. 

Exacerbating this horizontal concern is the significant vertical integration that the post-merger company would enjoy from the 

major cattle-feeding operation of Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding. 

Both the prepared testimony of Mr. Stumo and Mr. Bullard highlight how this captive supply will negatively impact competition 

and the prices paid to farmers and ranchers. 

Earlier this year, I signed a letter with several of my colleagues 

expressing some of these concerns to the Attorney General. Mr. 

Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that it be included in 

the record. 

14 

Chairman KOHL. It will be done. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Chairman, I hope that the Justice Department will get serious about protecting consumers and agricultural producers from increased consolidation and market concentration. 

Mr. Ross, in Professor Carstensen’s written testimony, he says, 

‘‘the Antitrust Division has an open investigation of the conduct of 

the milk industry, but the matter has been pending for years without any action.’’ This statement goes on to describe the industry as 

‘‘rife’’ with a ‘‘panoply of anticompetitive practices’’ that have resulted in ‘‘serious losses of income and coercion of farmers.’’ 

Now, I have heard similar frustration directly from dairy farmers 

and others in the dairy industry in Wisconsin. What do you have 

to say with regard to the status of the investigation and Professor 

Carstensen’s observation? 

Mr. ROSS. Senator, we take concerns about the dairy industry, as 

well as any other part of the important agriculture economy, very 

seriously. Without confirming or denying a particular investigation, 

which would be inappropriate, we continue to monitor any anticompetitive practices that are brought to our attention, and we do 

an extensive analysis to determine whether an antitrust enforcement action is appropriate. 

As my statement indicates, we have been active in the dairy industry involving the Suiza-Dean merger and other dairy areas, so 

we continue to have active knowledge and monitoring of the important sector in agriculture that involves a key industry in your 

State. 

Senator FEINGOLD. I look forward to following-up on that. 

Mr. Ross, Professor Carstensen described the controls that DOJ 

placed on the Dean-Suiza merger as ineffective. Specifically has 

written testimony says, ‘‘in addition, the press release announcing 

approval implied that the new firm would not enter into a longterm exclusive dealing contract with Dairy Farmers of America, the 

largest dairy cooperative. However, Dean and DFA quickly found 

a way around that commitment.’’ 

Could you shed some light on the merger commitment? Did the 

Antitrust Division err in not making the provision broader to include partnerships and joint ventures in that prohibition? 

Mr. ROSS. Senator, our analysis was a careful and thorough one, 

and the remedy we devised before allowing that merger to go forward was one that was based on extensive analysis of the market 

conditions on the ground. If there are concerns about what has 

happened subsequently, we welcome anybody bringing that to our 

attention, and we will examine it very seriously. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Well, it does sound like a potentially troubling oversight to me. 

Professor, do you have anything to add? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. The investigation was completed. The staff recommended that there be litigation. It has been sitting, at least according to the information I have, in the Assistant Attorney General’s office for more than a year. The key original attorney, I believe, has now reached retirement and retired. 

The Government—this alleged complaint—there was never a 

complaint in Dean-Suiza. It was what is called a ‘‘fix it first.’’ They 

15 

bargained for about 9 months about the divestiture. More divestiture was made than originally proposed. It was settled with whatever confidential documents were exchanged between the parties, 

since there was no consent decree, there was no Tunny Act disclosure requirement, no opportunity for anybody to comment on this, 

and then all kinds of problems began to emerge for the dairy world 

because of this relationship not only with Dean, new Dean, but also 

NDH, National Dairy Holdings, that was owned in substantial part 

by DFA, and then it gets linked to Hood, so you have got one, two, 

and three all tied together. 

One credit to the Justice Department: They did go after a small 

dairy acquisition—and it is in Mr. Ross’s statement—in Kentucky 

that DFA attempted to pull off. And one of the good things about 

that particular piece of litigation, because they actually went to 

trial on that, was that it did bring to light a good deal of the dubious transactions, the discriminatory transactions within the DFA 

empire. But for the Justice Department to claim that they are monitoring the situation is to say that they are doing nothing. 

Senator FEINGOLD. And although Mr. Ross indicated a willingness to be open to any sort of things that have happened since, it 

sounds to me like this could have been prevented in the first place 

by proper drafting. Is that a correct statement? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. If they had gone the consent decree route, yes, 

they could have drafted that. The State Attorneys General are involved in these investigations. The Justice Department is the party 

that has not been heard from. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Chairman, could I ask one more question? 

Chairman KOHL. Go right ahead. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you very much for the additional time. 

As the Chairman knows—and I am grateful for his support—I 

have worked with Senator Grassley for a number of years on legislation called the Fair Contracts for Growers Act that would make 

mandatory arbitration clauses in agricultural contracts unenforceable. 

The Judiciary Committee passed this bipartisan bill earlier this 

Congress by a wide margin, and the farm bill seems poised to at 

least take a step in the right direction by requiring that growers 

be given a specific option to opt in or out of any mandatory arbitration clause. But the Government needs to make sure that this provision has some teeth, and I will explain why by asking our witnesses to put themselves in the work boots of a poultry grower. 

So, first off, you have taken out a loan for several hundred thousands dollars to build poultry houses. There is only one poultry 

company contracting with growers in your region, and they supply 

you with chicks and feed and determine your payment based on the 

weight gain and condition of the animals at the end of each approximately 7-week, flock-to-flock contract. 

Your most recent contract has a new clause that commits you to 

mandatory binding arbitration with arbitration procedures dictated 

by the company. As required by the new farm bill language, you 

were told you have a choice whether to opt in or out of this provision. You have seen some information about large up-front fees required for arbitration and do not think you have enough cash to 

16 

cover them if a dispute arises. So you want to decline the arbitration clause, knowing that you may have a chance to go to arbitration if a dispute arises and the company still wants to arbitrate 

after the fact. 

But what if one of your neighbors opted out earlier in the year 

and he has since been plummeting down the grower ranking for 

weight gain and is being threatened with termination as a ‘‘bad 

producer’’? Does that make you think twice before opting out? 

Does it seem like law school here? 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. Yes, yes, and I am on the wrong side of the 

table, Senator. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator FEINGOLD. For once. 

Mr. CARSTENSEN. Yes. That would be an enormous problem with 

an opt-in/opt-out legislation of this sort. You know, arbitration 

when agreed to by the parties at the time of the dispute is fine. 

It can be actually a very efficient dispute resolution mechanism 

when it is imposed on parties, and especially when there is unequal 

bargaining power as in the poultry example that you have, and 

that is a very real-world example. 

Opt-in/opt-out, do you want to continue to be my poultry raiser? 

In which case you are going to opt for whatever I want you to opt 

for because I as the contractor am going to have the power. So it 

is such a theoretically interesting step if you imagined equal bargaining power, but in real-world terms, it really does not solve the 

problem. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Ross, do you want to comment at all? 

Mr. ROSS. Certainly, Senator. This sounds like a provision in 

which there may be disagreement among farmers over whether 

they like it or they do not like it. Some may and some may not. 

In any event, contract provisions really fall outside the purview 

of antitrust enforcement action except when they are a part of a 

larger analysis in a merger context. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Fair enough. And thank you for the additional time, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold. And, 

gentlemen, we appreciate your being here today. You have brought 

to light many of the important issues that we are discussing and 

studying, and thanks for coming. 

We will turn now to the second panel. Our first witness on the 

second panel will be Wesley Batista. Mr. Batista is the President 

and the CEO of JBS/Swift and Company. Prior to becoming CEO 

of JBS/Swift, Mr. Batista was the chief operating officer of JBS’s 

beef operations in Brazil and in Argentina. 

Our next witness will be Steve Hunt. Mr. Hunt is the CEO and 

co-founder of U.S. Premium Beef and Chairman of the Board of National Beef Packing Company. Prior to his involvement at U.S. Premium Beef, Mr. Hunt worked in various areas of commercial banking, including direct agricultural lending and credit training. 

Our next witness will be Bill Bullard. Mr. Bullard is the CEO of 

the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers 

of America, or R-CALF USA. Prior to joining R-CALF USA, Mr. 

Bullard served as the Executive Director of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. He is also a former cow and calf rancher. 

17 

Our next witness will be Dillon Feuz. Professor Feuz teaches agricultural economic at Utah State University. His primary research 

interests are livestock marketing as well as farm and ranch management. 

Next we will have Michael Stumo. Mr. Stumo serves as the general counsel for the Organization for Competitive Markets, which 

is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization with a focus on 

competition issues in agriculture. 

And, finally, we will have David Balto. Mr. Balto is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where he focuses on competition policy, intellectual property law, as well as health care. He 

has also worked as an antitrust attorney at the Antitrust Division 

of the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, as well 

as in the private sector. 

We appreciate all of you being here today. If you will rise and 

raise your right hand, repeat after me. Do you affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and 

nothing but, so help you God? 

Mr. BATISTA. I do. 

Mr. HUNT. I do. 

Mr. BULLARD. I do. 

Mr. FEUZ. I do. 

Mr. STUMO. I do. 

Mr. BALTO. I do. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Batista, we will start with you. 

STATEMENT OF WESLEY M. BATISTA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NORTH AMERICA, JBS SWIFT AND COMPANY, GREELEY, 

COLORADO 

Mr. BATISTA. Mr. Chairman and other members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to introduce JBS/Swift to the 

Committee and to discuss our commitment to invest in America’s 

meatpacking industry. I am the CEO of JBS/Swift, and I want to 

share with you today JBS’ vision. 

Our goal through these transactions is to invest our skills, energy, expertise, and money to grow the U.S. meatpacking industry. 

We want to expand U.S. sales of beef and pork, domestically and 

around the world. In the process, we will keep and create U.S. jobs. 

We are operators of beef, pork, and lamb processing plants, not 

financial investors. My father started our business in 1955 when 

he slaughtered just one or two animals per day to supply restaurants in the new capital city of Brazil—Brasilia. We are still a 

family business. JBS now has global operation that we plan to use 

as a platform to expand the sales of U.S. beef and pork around the 

world. 

Our history is clear. When we acquired Swift last year, we expanded operations, we added additional shifts, we hired more employees, we improved operations, and we bought more cattle. With 

respect to the Smithfield and National facilities, we will do the 

same—buy more animals, expand operations, and hire more workers. 

As we are doing right now, we will continue to compete aggressively for the purchase of cattle and the sales of beef by all availVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
18 

able commercial means. And we will increase our demand and 

sales over time. This will benefit ranchers and feedlots. 

We will keep plants open, make them more efficient, expand 

sales of U.S. beef. We also look forward to hire more workers consistent with changes in U.S. immigration law. We view the U.S. 

labor force as a great resource. 

A couple of questions have been raised that we would like to address. The first is our relationship with producers. We will continue 

to work with producers as we always have. I have had meetings 

with employees, cattle producers, and community leaders in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas, and feel we are being embraced. I will 

continue to do this. 

There is one major region in the Nation which contains the vast 

majority of all the major slaughtering plants for steer and heifers. 

That region is the beef belt. It includes northern Texas, Oklahoma, 

Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado. None of the Smithfield plants are in the beef belt. Most of the Smithfield plants handle primarily Holstein steers and cows. 

Regarding the crucial beef belt, after this merger, JBS, Cargill, 

Tyson, and regional and local plants will continue to compete intensely for the purchase of cattle. With cattle moving on trucks, 

there will be many competing plants wanting to buy animals in the 

beef belt. 

In terms of consumer prices, beef products are sold throughout 

the Nation by numerous competitors of all sizes. JBS/Swift sells 

primarily commodity beef and some case-ready beef and pork. In 

contrast, National Beef sells very successful, branded beef products, 

and we plan to expand those operations. Swift and National will 

continue to sell into different, and competitive, national markets. 

In fact, when selling to large national retailers there will be intense competition among national, regional, and local players. 

I want to end with one final point. The JBS history in the U.S. 

is before you. Swift was floundering, had reduced its work force, 

shut down shifts, and sold plants before JBS purchased Swift. 

Then, after we bought Swift, we expanded operations, added additional shifts, and hired more workers. We kept local managers. 

We are investing billions of our company’s money in the United 

States, with a goal to grow the industry, to hire more U.S. workers, 

and increase demand for U.S. beef and pork around the world. 

We are fully cooperating with the Department of Justice review 

and hope that review can conclude as swiftly as possible so that we 

can implement our growth strategy on beef and pork. 

We appreciate this opportunity to tell our story before this Committee and look forward to the answering your questions. 

On a personal note, my family and I greatly enjoy living in 

America in our home in Fort Collins. This is a great country. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Batista appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Mr. Batista. 

Mr. Hunt? 

19 

STATEMENT OF STEVEN D. HUNT, CHIEF EXECUTIVE 

OFFICER, U.S. PREMIUM BEEF, LTD., KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 

Mr. HUNT. Chairman Kohl, I appreciate this opportunity to come 

before you today to talk about JBS’ proposed transaction to acquire 

National Beef from U.S. Premium Beef. I am the CEO of U.S. Premium Beef and the Chairman of National Beef, but most importantly, I am a fifth-generation cattle producer. I speak to you today 

on behalf of U.S. Premium Beef owners and independent producers, 

which on March 14th overwhelmingly voted to favor proceeding 

with this transaction. They believe that the livelihood of all cattle 

producers is dependent upon the health and growth of the beef industry, and that is why we agree with JBS’ vision. 

U.S. Premium Beef is a one of a kind producer-owned beef processing company, formed to link producers with consumers through 

ownership in processing. As a result, we have been able to design 

a supply of cattle specifically bred and managed to meet consumer 

preferences, which results in premiums back to the producer and 

the processing company. 

U.S. Premium Beef was formed in 1997. In addition to processing 

customer cattle throughout the United States, we have processed 

over 6 million cattle of U.S. Premium Beef members. In addition 

to that, we have paid out over $117 million in cash premiums to 

our members since we began. We have also paid an additional $87 

million in cash dividends. That was the result of our ownership in 

processing. In other words, our producer owners have become beef 

processors through U.S. Premium Beef. We have been able to realize the financial rewards from the ranch to the consumer’s plate. 

Simply put, through value-based pricing, our company gives producers the economic incentive to deliver more valuable, consumerpreferred beef. 

Since our formation, we have been working to diversify our business geographically through expansion, acquisition of other protein 

businesses, and pursuit of businesses in markets outside the 

United States. This has been essential in managing the risk our 

owners take in ownership of processing. This is a strategy that producers pursue on the farm and that other businesses pursue as 

well. 

Since the discovery of BSE in the United States in 2003 and the 

subsequent loss of the export market, losses and prospects of the 

declining herd have left the beef industry in a position where few 

want to invest. 

In 2006, Hicks Muse announced that they were selling Swift. 

Smithfield Foods has also made the decision to exit the beef processing industry. Whereas prior to 2003, our company was routinely 

approached by willing investors and partners, today we witness 

very few, if any, parties willing to invest in the U.S. beef processing 

industry, except one. 

JBS, a family owned business based in Sao Paulo, Brazil—you 

have just heard from Wesley Batista—with U.S. headquarters in 

Greeley, Colorado, is willing to invest over $3 billion in our U.S. 

meat processing industry. They believe that by putting our companies together, we can create more value and increase efficiencies, 

not only necessary to sustain our industry, but to begin growing it 

again. 

20 

More importantly, JBS has the same vision for industry growth 

and success as we do. Since acquiring Swift last year, JBS has expanded production and purchased more cattle. They also have 

looked for ways to expand demand for U.S. beef by pushing into 

new international markets. They are able to use their unique perspective to introduce U.S. beef to foreign companies and new customers. 

For U.S. Premium Beef, this partnership with JBS is a natural 

decision that enables our producer owners to broaden our investment into a well-diversified, multi-protein world leader in valueadded products, while at the same time we are able to maintain 

our founding principles of value-based pricing and dissemination of 

valuable carcass data to every single producer on every single animal. 

JBS respects what we have accomplished at U.S. Premium Beef/ 

National Beef and wants to buildupon our value-added strategy to 

help bring more value to producers so we can expand production 

once again. After the completion of our proposed transaction with 

JBS, more producers will have the ability to market through our 

unique producer-owned company by delivering cattle to more 

plants, thus reducing freight costs and improving efficiencies for 

producers and the processing company. Our confidence in JBS’ 

dedication to expanding demand for U.S. beef is a strategy that is 

exemplified by U.S. Premium Beef’s agreement to become a substantial investor in JBS. 

The farmer and rancher owners of U.S. Premium Beef have a 

right and an obligation to pursue sound business strategies employed by our competitors, recommended by our universities, and 

applauded by Congress. These include value-added strategies 

through vertical integration from the bottom up, product diversification to lay off risk, and foreign investment to participate in 

the growing consumer global market. 

As you know, the Department of Justice is reviewing the proposed transaction. I am confident its review will be thorough and, 

when complete, will lead them to recognize the benefits of this 

transaction. The beef processing industry is highly competitive, 

with Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and a number of other processors remaining to compete fiercely for cattle and to sell beef to our sophisticated customer base. This transaction will enhance this competition 

by allowing the combined company to perform more efficiently and 

provide a platform for growth in the future. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to answering questions later. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunt appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Mr. Hunt. 

Mr. Bullard? 

STATEMENT OF BILL BULLARD, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

RANCHERS-CATTLEMEN ACTION LEGAL FUND, UNITED 

STOCKGROWERS OF AMERICA, BILLINGS, MONTANA 

Mr. BULLARD. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity. I 

represent the thousands of men and women who own and operate 

cattle operations all across this country as the CEO of R-CALF 

21 

USA. Our organization endeavors to ensure that our independent 

cattle producers can remain profitable long into the future. 

I want to describe our industry to you. The United States cattle 

industry is the single largest segment of American agriculture. It 

produces $50 billion annually; 11 States produce over $1 billion a 

year. This industry is intrinsically important to the overall prosperity of rural America. 

It is important that the Subcommittee realize that while the four 

major packers do control the steer and heifer market, that steer 

and heifer market represents only 27 million of the 45 million cattle that are sold every year. Our U.S. cattle industry is a dynamic 

industry, and in that industry, we have various value-added segments. So while we have 45 million cattle sold every year, 27 million are sold into this highly concentrated marketing structure consisting of just four firms. And it is this segment of the industry 

that serves as a portal to actually cause harm throughout the industry if there is any price distortion that occurs within this segment. 

Our industry can be viewed as a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid, you have the seed stock producers—the breeders. The breeders sell breeding animals to the cow/calf producers. The cow/calf 

producers produce a new calf every year. They will keep that calf 

for 4 to 6 months. That calf is then sold to a backgrounder. A 

backgrounder will grow that animal through what might be called 

its adolescent years. The backgrounder could then sell that animal 

to a stocker. The stocker would run that animal for about 4 

months. So it takes about 18 months from the time that an animal 

is birthed until it is actually sold in the steer and heifer market 

to one of these four packers. 

Our industry in this pyramid, those segments that I described— 

the breeder, the cow/calf producer, the stocker, the feeder—we have 

about 970,000 of them left in the United States. And as you move 

up this pyramid, you get closer to the feeding sector. There are 

about 93,000 feeders left in the United States. But that industry 

is becoming increasingly consolidated as well because there are 

now fewer than 2,500 feeders that actually sell approximately 23 

million cattle to these four meatpackers. 

So what I have described is an industry, a dynamic industry that 

is intrinsically important to the prosperity of rural America, that 

is valuable in every State of the Union. But this industry has the 

price-making segment at the top of the pyramid, and any distortion 

in that price will reverberate all the way down through the industry. A 3-percent reduction in price, for example, which is about 

what they found in terms of detrimental impacts of further concentration in this industry, a 3-percent impact would reduce that 

$50 billion annual revenue generation by $1.5 billion, a loss of $1.5 

billion. This would be damaging to the 970,000 independent producers as well as damaging to the rural communities that they 

support. 

This industry has been besieged by market power for quite some 

time, and we have ample evidence to demonstrate this, and I have 

provided that in my written testimony. 

For example, we have lost 40 percent of our producers just since 

1980. We had 1.6 million cattle producers in 1980. We are down 

22 

to about 970,000 today. Our size of the U.S. cattle herd has been 

reducing for many, many years. We have decreased the size of the 

herd today to about where it was back in the 1950s. And while we 

have reduced the size of our production capacity by reducing our 

herd size, we have also been experiencing a disruption of the historical cattle cycle. That cattle cycle has provided a bellwether indicator of the competitiveness of this industry. And recently, USDA 

acknowledged that the analogous hog industry that is also experiencing a loss in its hog cycle, that loss is attributed to a changing 

market structure, a market structure that is evidenced by further 

consolidation and concentration. 

I want to leave you with this. Our industry is in a state of emergency right now. We continue to experience contraction. This merger is going to exacerbate the current contraction of this industry, 

and like the hog industry, as already described, you had 667,000 

producers in 1980, down to 67,000 today. You lost 90 percent of all 

the producers in that industry. We are going to see the same thing 

in the cattle industry unless the Department of Justice, and unless 

the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, take specific action to reverse 

the present course. Because, like Congress was unaware of the tremendous exodus of hog producers, you will be unaware of the exodus of cattle producers, because it will happen one cattle operation 

at a time in one rural community at a time until we wake up one 

morning and say we have lost the critical mass within this industry to maintain a viable market. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bullard appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Mr. Bullard. 

Mr. Feuz, Dr. Feuz? 

STATEMENT OF DILLON M. FEUZ, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT 

OF ECONOMICS, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, LOGAN, UTAH 

Mr. FEUZ. Thank you, Senator Kohl, for the opportunity to speak 

to the Committee. 

Chairman KOHL. I do not think your microphone is on. 

Mr. FEUZ. Thank you, Senator Kohl. I want to begin my comments by just reiterating the change that has taken place in the 

packing industry over the last 20 years when you look at the major 

players—Tyson who acquired IBP, Smithfield who acquired Moyer 

Packing, and Packerland ConAgra who was a major player in 1987, 

exited the industry in 2002, and most recently, Swift who went out 

with the JBS acquisition of those. 

I point that out as a fact that this is not a static industry, but 

one where firms continue to enter and exit the industry. From a 

pure economic point of view, I would have much greater concern 

about the level of concentration and market power if I did not see 

firms entering and exiting the industry. 

Second, I point out that there likely is not excessive profits being 

generated in this industry due to the level of concentration, or you 

would likely see the players that are there remaining in that industry to capture those excessive profits. Certainly I do not think if 

IPB were strong enough they would have allowed Tyson to acquire 

them, nor would have ConAgra, a major agribusiness firm that conVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
23 

tinues to be involved in agriculture, divested themselves of both 

cattle feeding and beef packing had they been earning excessive 

profits due to concentration. 

As I look specifically at this merger, I see three potential benefits. First of all, as JBS/Swift has noted, they bring outside capital 

and new ideas into an industry that is probably needing both. As 

you look at the packing industry over the last couple of years, margins have been very small in that industry, and certainly some of 

the existing players are probably in a financial condition that they 

would not be able to continue operations without an addition of 

capital. 

Perhaps even more important is the addition of some new ideas, 

particularly, I think, in the export market area where JBS Company has shown a history of being very aggressive in the world export markets, and I think they can bring that level of expertise to 

the U.S. and increase our exports, particularly into some markets 

where we have previously not had access. 

Another benefit, I think, has been highlighted somewhat by Mr. 

Hunt from U.S. Premium Beef. They have had one of the premier 

pricing grids for fed cattle, particularly upper-quality fed cattle 

that has been in the industry, that has allowed independent producers to receive a premium if they are producing a higher-quality 

animal. Unfortunately, in the present situation, transportation has 

restricted the producers that could really benefit from that because 

all those cattle had to be slaughtered basically in western Nebraska to national plants. With this merger, that will become much 

more geographically dispersed into the Northeast, the Wester markets, as well as throughout Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas as 

there are greater plants that would have that grid available. 

And, last, I think on the market power issue alone, perhaps three 

strong players competing for a limited supply of cattle will be more 

aggressive in the marketplace than what I view as currently two 

strong majors and one weak major within two regional competitors, 

one of which itself was probably in some financial difficulty. As I 

talked with one feedlot operator in Utah, he mentioned to me that 

perhaps one strong player in the market would be better than a 

weak or no player. 

On a couple of cautionary notes, certainly the loss of a bidder in 

a marketplace is a concern. Going from four major players to three 

in the primary cattle feeding area will be of concern. However, if 

the plants stay open, you will still have the same competition for 

the number of cattle. Perhaps of greater concern would be in the 

culled cow and dairy market in the Southwest where you may be 

going from two independent firms—Smithfield and National—to 

one in those areas. That could be a concern. 

Last, I want to close. I have heard several comments today about 

a concern for the overall food price level and what this merger may 

do, and I would suggest that if the Senate is concerned about the 

price of food, it would be much more advantageous to look at what 

I view as an ill- advised corn ethanol policy that is doing far more 

damage in the livestock industry and will continue for the next few 

years than what this merger or others would do in that industry. 

Thank you. 

24 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Feuz appears as a submission for 

the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Dr. Feuz. 

Mr. Stumo? 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL STUMO, LEGAL COUNSEL, ORGANIZATION FOR COMPETITIVE MARKETS, LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 

Mr. STUMO. Thank you, Senator Kohl. I would ask that my written comments be submitted to the record, please. 

Chairman KOHL. It will be done. 

Mr. STUMO. The Organization for Competitive Markets has members, including feeders—large, medium, and small—across the 

spectrum. They are not here speaking today because they are 

afraid. They are afraid of retaliation in the marketplace if they say 

their fears about the lack of competition when the packer buyers 

discipline them every week and every day in the market. 

When my members speak to DOJ, they insist on confidentiality 

agreements so nobody will find out, so they won’t lose yet another 

buyer. They insist on it. They wish competition. They appreciate 

the packers. They appreciate Tyson, Cargill, Swift, National, and 

Smithfield, all of them. But they do not appreciate the chokehold 

on market access that public policy and the packers have combined 

to create. That chokehold is choking off the number of open negotiated market shackle space in these plants that is available for 

these fellows and feedlots to sell into. 

When you exert market power, you want to grab the bottleneck. 

In the oil market, in the oil merger of BP-Amoco, Cushing, Oklahoma, was the bottleneck pipeline where price was set. That is 

where you wanted to have your hands wrapped around. Here you 

want to have your hands wrapped around rationing shackle space. 

There is the Great Plains. You will see the overlap between JBS 

plants and National Beef plants. People will tell you that feeders 

in that area all have four buyers. They do not. They may have 

three, two, or the small guys may beg for someone to come look at 

their cattle. It didn’t used to be. Through the consolidation, people 

say it makes no difference. They come up with happy theories as 

to why it will be happy for everybody. We have heard them today. 

They are untrue. The results are that: a declining number of cow 

operations and declining cow herd. We have 300 million people in 

this country today, increased from 200 million in 1967. They eat a 

lot of beef. We should produce more beef to feed them. We don’t. 

Oligopsony power is predicted to be inefficient because it depresses 

prices, it depresses output. Oligopsony in this industry has met 

that prediction. As we concentrate, we depress price, we depress 

output. We hear vague claims of overcapacity, but yet we are going 

to expand capacity. Which one is it? 

If there is overcapacity, it is because of oligopsony depressing 

price and depressing production. And that is bad. We could produce 

more beef. We could produce more beef to feed the U.S. This is 

what public policy has wrought. It is poor performance. DOJ has 

failed. 

DOJ gets all wrapped up in competitive conduct. The judges have 

not treated them well. Structure matters. Just as 65 miles an hour 

is the speed we set on the highway, it is clear everybody knows you 

25 

can drive safe over that, but it is highly likely to create more accidents than going the speed limit. Structure is the same. We can 

argue about whether it is going to be unreasonable practices or 

something, but it is highly likely we will have bad results like you 

see on the right. We have had. It is a poorly performing country 

when we eat more food, or ag sector. 

DOJ has failed in the Smithfield versus Premium standard merger because in a marginally competitive market they allowed merger 

to monopoly in the Southeast U.S. Ghastly result. One packer. 

They allowed it. Not an objection. 

Monsanto bought Delta and Pine Land Company. That merger 

was rejected in 2000, but they took another run at it and, by golly, 

this DOJ let it happen, with an insignificant divestiture of 

Stonefield. Thus, Monsanto has 50 percent of the cotton seed market in the U.S., 75 percent in some key regions. Prices go way up. 

They also choked off competing research by other competitors like 

Dupont, Syngenta, and others to kill the baby in the crib so there 

will not be competition in the future with future innovation. 

We like innovation and choice, and we like competition. We do 

not have it. All the arguments that say we do are based, as you 

heard, perhaps, may, this could happen—that sort of thing. There 

is no proof. That is why your bill 1759 shifts the burden of proof 

so they have to actually prove it. They cannot just think in utter 

happy thoughts so judges accept it and ignore all the proof of anticompetitive harm. 

Antitrust is out of balance. We could have a flourishing agriculture in dairy, beef, and pork. We could have lower seed prices, 

more choice and innovation in seed, corn, cotton, and soy. We do 

not because of failures at the Department of Justice. S. 1759 is a 

good start, and DOJ needs to stop allowing marginal competitive 

industries to become more noncompetitive. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stumo appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you, Mr. Stumo. 

Mr. Balto? 

STATEMENT OF DAVID A. BALTO, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER 

FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. BALTO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Center for American Progress 

and the Consumer Federation of America. I speak from the experience of over a quarter century as an antitrust lawyer, the vast majority of which as an antitrust enforcer. 

I frequently represent parties before the DOJ and the FTC, and 

there is something different when you represent farmers before 

DOJ. The standards that are effectively applied are different. The 

level of attention is not as great. 

I represented the hog producers in Premium Standard/Smithfield 

merger, and DOJ permitted the merger concluding that you could 

truck a hog 400 miles. There was just simply no evidence of that. 

They made a mistake. 

I have a simple message today. This merger poses a serious 

threat to competition to both consumers and to producers. IncreasVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:12 Nov 03, 2008 Jkt 045064 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\45064.TXT SJUD1 PsN: CMORC
26 

ing concentration in agricultural processing, leads to less compensation to the farmer and higher prices to the consumers. Somehow both lose. 

This merger, by combining three firms and reducing the number 

of beef processors from five to three, will lead to a level of concentration that the founders of the beef trust, the people who the 

Sherman Act was passed to stop, the founders of the beef trust 

could not imagine in their wildest dreams. 

Now, I have never listened to a more persuasive case about the 

vulnerability of a market than that presented in the testimony of 

Mr. Stumo and Mr. Bullard. They demonstrated in their testimony 

how weak the position of the producers are, how they are increasingly subject to manipulation because of vertical integration and 

the short window they have to sell. With that as the foundation, 

if you look at the traditional approach under the law or the Merger 

Guidelines, even going past concentration, this merger poses a substantial unilateral, anticompetitive effect. JBS and National compete head to head for producers. Taking one out of the market is 

going to lower compensation. 

This is an environment ripe for coordination, tacit collusion. 

There are lots of cases involving tacit collusion. They are noted in 

my testimony. And it is a lot easier to collude when you have only 

got three firms around the table instead of five. I am not suggesting that these firms collude explicitly. No, there is no need to. 

In a market like this one where the information is so public, where 

it is so easy to know what each firm is doing, they do not need to 

meet in a smoke-filled room. 

Do we have hope? No, I am skeptical. This is a time of incredibly 

lax merger enforcement. Our friends at the Justice Department 

have not gone to Federal court to challenge a merger in 5 years. 

They say in their testimony, Mr. Chairman, they bring agriculture 

cases. None of those cases involve monopsony power. None of them 

involve protecting producers from buyer power. None. No case have 

they brought protecting producers against buyer power for 9 years. 

Now, 9 years ago, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General testified before the Senate, and he said no—no to mergers in this processing segment. And so what happened? People found other ways 

of doing efficient transactions that Dr. Feuz has noted. 

What is the problem here? DOJ is allowing the perfect become 

the enemy of the good. They are looking for the perfect case. They 

use econometric tools that they know at best are imperfect at best, 

and based on that, they simply are permitting a wide range of 

mergers to occur. 

Now, I am not in any fashion criticizing the dedicated staff. What 

I am concerned about is the leadership that is applied to the Division. What can we do? There have been no other industries with 

as many hearings on competition issues as agriculture and antitrust. 

First, DOJ must carefully scrutinize this merger. My testimony 

is explicit. They need to engage the opponents in an open dialogue. 

Mr. Ross testified here today that he hears the concerns of the producers. Well, Mr. Ross and his supervisors are not in this hearing 

room right now. They walked out of this hearing as soon as they 

finished testifying. Whether they hear it, that is not the point. 

27 

They need to engage the producers in an active fashion. Mr. 

Bullard and Mr. Stumo, traveling here on their own expense, have 

gone and provided tremendous documentation of a severe competitive problem. 

Second, I hope the Committee exercises its oversight power. It 

sounds like you are moving in that direction. 

Third, the FTC and DOJ to their credit have conducted a series 

of policy hearings over the past several years. They held hearings 

on the Merger Guidelines. Professor Carstensen testified and said 

you need special standards for monopsony. Was that issue ever addressed in their report on the Merger Guidelines? No. Did they address agricultural issues in that report? No. Did they address monopsony issues in that report? No. They have to do a better job of 

addressing these issues in a more concrete fashion and taking 

these issues seriously. 

Finally, passage of the proposed Grassley-Kohl bill is absolutely 

necessary to redressing the imbalance here, to protect the interests 

of not only family farmers but consumers, because both parties ultimately benefit if the marketplace is truly competitive. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Balto appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you very much, Mr. Balto. 

Mr. Batista, many independent ranchers are concerned that once 

this merger, if it is approved, occurs, they will have little leverage 

with respect to the enormous buying power of the three remaining 

large meatpackers and that the prices they receive will decline. 

Why are they correct to be saying that? 

Mr. BATISTA. Mr. Chairman, basically our view about this, who 

defines the market, the consumers do. This industry needs to work 

to expand demand here in the U.S. and outside the U.S. For us, 

the most important thing this industry needs is to expand demand 

for U.S. beef. U.S. beef in 2003 had the BSE problem. We need to 

reopen all these markets and to sell U.S. beef to different markets 

and to have more options to aggregate value for U.S. beef. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Bullard, what is your thought? 

Mr. BULLARD. Well, Mr. Chairman, the alarming irony behind 

the fact that during the period when our industry was contracting, 

both in terms of the number of cattle operations and the size of our 

cattle herd and the loss of our cattle cycle, that was happening at 

the same time that domestic consumption of beef was increasing 

dramatically. After 1993, we saw a significant increase in the demand—domestic consumption, and yet our industry was contracting. That is counterintuitive to competitive market signals. 

That counters Mr. Batista’s claim that all they need to do is increase more demand and that will improve conditions for cattle 

producers. 

As was discussed earlier, the increased income does not fall back 

through to the cattle producers. It is captured by this highly concentrated marketing structure. Until we can explain why in the 

past 4 years we have had the widest spread between U.S. production and U.S. consumption, these arguments are baseless. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Stumo? 

28 

Mr. STUMO. We hear and have heard justifications all the time— 

and I characterize them as ‘‘happy thoughts without proof,’’ and for 

some reason people in decisionmaking positions have just accepted 

them. We heard about the quality, the vertical integration, the 

quality. We have seed producer members, seed stock producer 

members, that is. They produce Angus beef. They produce natural 

beef. They produce lean beef. There is no sign on their farms or 

ranches that say these cattle must go to only this packer or to this 

type of a contract arrangement. Everyone sells—every one of the 

benefits that have been mentioned today could be achieved through 

ways that are not anticompetitive, through better management, 

through better marketing, through genetics that are not exclusive 

to any marketing method or any plant. Swift, JBS/Swift, has a 

plant sitting now in Grand Island, Kansas, with a good shell that 

burnt—part of it burnt down a couple years ago, but I know they 

have told livestock associations that it is a good plant, they could 

put it back into operation. That is a way they could expand in 

Grand Island, Kansas, right over there, for cheaper than paying 

triple the value of U.S. Premium Beef shares, which is basically 

buying market power to shut out a competitor. 

We are going to have no change in capacity, no change in plants, 

no change in plant size, no change in genetics, no change in consumer demand, but a decrease in competition and a market closure 

for many producers. 

Chairman KOHL. OK. Mr. Bullard, JBS/Swift will also acquire, as 

we discussed, Five Rivers, the Nation’s largest feedlot. This one 

feedlot feeds and markets 2 million cattle annually. Why does 

JBS’s acquisition of Five Rivers concern you, Mr. Bullard? 

Mr. BULLARD. Right now, Five Rivers feedlots is owned by Smithfield, and as Mr. Batista explained, Smithfield’s slaughtering operations are far removed from the feeding area where the feedlots 

exist. In other words, Smithfield is not presently able to use the 

cattle produced in Five Rivers in order to satisfy their demand 

needs—their slaughter capacity of their plants. 

Instead, we believe Smithfield operates that Five Rivers feedlot 

presently as an independent feeder, probably selling to Cargill, 

Tyson, and National. 

However, under this merger, JBS will be in close proximity to all 

of those feedlots. Those feedlots produce about 2 million cattle a 

year, which is about 7 percent of the steer and heifer slaughter 

every year. So JBS is going to be able to capture 2 million head 

and to use those animals strategically to keep from entering the 

competitive marketplace to purchase cattle from other producers. 

In addition to that, with that level of vertical integration that 

will occur within our industry, JBS is going to have a distinct advantage because it is going to have what would essentially be insider information. It is going to know the future orders for beef 

when it is out competing in the market for feeder cattle—lighter 

cattle from the independent cow/calf producers and stockers and 

backgrounders. 

So JBS is going to have information about the value of those animals long before independent producers will have, and as a result 

of that, producers will be disadvantaged, again, by the exploitation 

of market power by the major packers. 

29 

Thank you. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you. 

Mr. Stumo and then Mr. Balto, what is your response and reaction? 

Mr. STUMO. The post-merger company, if this yet another anticompetitive merger is allowed, will have 43,500 head per day capacity. If you multiply that times 250 kill days per year, you are 

at 10.6 million head. 

Smithfield’s website advertises Five Rivers as 2 million per year 

capacity. If you figure each animal has a $1,000 value as a thumb 

rule, that is $2 billion. Smithfield right now has an incentive to 

maximize value, has an incentive that the market be a proper market. Those cattle are relatively free agents, though they may be 

contracted and partially a problem in some areas. 

If they become part of this final JBS/Swift, they become nearly 

20 percent of their full capacity, but as far as their fed cattle subset 

of capacity, excluding the Holsteins and the culled cows, which are 

directly tied to the fed cattle market but yet a different market— 

they are sort of a basis spread there—we are basically taking oneand-a-half plant equivalence offline in the Midwest. 

So not only do you lose one buyer in the Great Plains fed cattle 

base price setting region, you are not only losing 25 percent of the 

buyers in the region, you are also taking another plant and a half 

out of the market, so you are almost going—instead of four to three 

in that region, you are almost going four to two in many ways. And 

that is assuming—which please do not assume that there are buyers from every one of those plants in every feedlot when there are 

feedlots begging for one buy. 

So it is a major, major problem and a major additional shift beyond a mere horizontal merger. 

Chairman KOHL. OK. Mr. Balto? 

Mr. BALTO. Well, Mr. Bullard and Mr. Stumo, as always, hit the 

nail on the head. Vertical mergers can facilitate collusion. Let me 

just give you a real-world example in another industry. The market 

of paper label stock. 

Several years ago, UPM, a Finish company, wanted to acquire an 

American paper label stock manufacturer. There was another competitor Avery that was vertically integrated. Because Avery was a 

large supplier of paper label stock and also a competitor of those 

firms, it was able to facilitate collusion that eventually was attacked by the European Commission. 

In other words, the agencies—Senator Hatch’s question suggested whether or not vertical integration was generally innocuous. 

No, in this setting and many other settings, it is not. It provides 

a very useful tool to facilitate either tacit or explicit collusion, and 

that should be a serious concern investigated by the Justice Department. 

Chairman KOHL. All right. Mr. Batista, if the Department of Justice ordered you to divest the Five Rivers feedlot as a condition of 

approving the deal, would you agree to do that, the divestiture as 

a condition of approving the deal? 

Mr. BATISTA. Senator, this is not our intention because we have 

this deal with Smithfield which includes Five Rivers and the 

30 

Smithfield beef plants. Only I would like to comment some about 

Five Rivers here. 

The annual turnover in Five Rivers is around 1.4 to 1.6 million 

head per year. It is not 2 million head per year. Five Rivers represents around 5 percent of the total U.S. cattle slaughter. When 

Five Rivers is running around this number, it will represent 

around 10 percent of our slaughter per year. Five Rivers today 

runs independently—it will continue running the same way it runs 

today. Five Rivers does not sell a lot of cattle in the spot market, 

but through contracts. In our view, sincerely, Five Rivers is part 

of the deal with Smithfield. 

Chairman KOHL. What about you, Mr. Balto? Do you think we 

ought to place that as a minimum condition on a deal? 

Mr. BALTO. I think if you really carefully study the testimony of 

Mr. Bullard and Mr. Stumo, you see this is a fragile market that 

any kind of acquisition should receive extremely serious scrutiny. 

And I doubt that a divestiture of Five Rivers and all of National’s 

plants in the Plains States would be sufficient to remedy all those 

competitive concerns. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Bullard, if the meatpacking firms gain 

lower prices for cattle because of their increased buying power, do 

you think it is likely that these price savings will be passed on to 

consumers? 

Mr. BULLARD. We, in fact, see evidence to the contrary. In my 

written testimony—and if I need to, I would ask that it be submitted into the official record as well. 

Chairman KOHL. It will be. 

Mr. BULLARD. But in that testimony, you will find a chart that 

shows, for example, the hog industry. It shows the price spread between the price that producers receive for hogs versus what consumers are paying for pork in an industry that is even more 

vertically integrated than is the U.S. cattle industry. There we see 

an inverse relationship—an ever increasing cost to consumers for 

pork and a decreasing price paid to U.S. hog producers. 

The cattle industry at this point in time and the chart in my 

written comments show that U.S. consumers are paying more for 

beef, and that while live cattle prices have indeed increased since 

2003, the spread between what the producer receives and what the 

consumer pays is ever widening, indicating in economic terms that 

the market is becoming inefficient and inequitable for both consumers and producers. 

So the answer to the question is no. If the meatpacker pays less 

for cattle, as we have seen over time, U.S. consumers will continue 

to pay whatever the retailer can charge and is accepted by consumers, and prices will continue to increase. We have lost the relationship, the direct relationship between the price of the raw commodity and the price of the commodity eventually sold to the consumer. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Batista, do you agree with Mr. Bullard? 

Mr. BATISTA. Basically, Senator, this market is very dynamic. 

This market is driven by supply and demand. When the price hits 

cycle, we have seasonal influences here in the U.S. in this time, the 

demand is better. In our view, the market is following the cattle 

31 

price and the beef price, following the same structure, following 

supply and demand. 

Chairman KOHL. Anybody want to comment on his statement? 

Dr. Feuz? 

Mr. FEUZ. A comment on a couple of things that have been discussed. One, the chart here on the right only shows half the picture 

in terms of we have had declining cattle numbers, but pounds of 

beef have actually -was at a record level in 2006. So when you look 

at the consumer market, they have seen more product. 

In my opinion, the price level is not established at the packer 

level. The price level is established at the retail level. We can increase cattle numbers. We can increase beef production. We can 

force consumers to eat more. But it will be at a lower price. The 

packers work on a margin. They pass it down. Certainly that margin has widened because the costs have increased as well as what 

we have asked packers to do with that product has changed drastically in the last several years from going to producing—simply 

harvesting the animal and leaving the plant with carcass beef to 

all the value-added processes. Even if you look at how we sell hamburger in the retail industry today, a lot of that is in patty form, 

not in bulk. We already have the seasoning put in for taco meat, 

fajitas, et cetera. All those processes have been aimed at hitting 

consumer demand, increasing consumer demand, but one of the results of those will be a wide spread between the retail price and 

the farm-level price. 

Certainly that can happen without packers or the retailers extracting an excessive margin due to market power. 

Chairman KOHL. Thank you. 

Mr. STUMO. Sir? 

Chairman KOHL. Yes, sir, Mr. Stumo. 

Mr. STUMO. Sir, that is untrue, what was just said. The data series excludes the further processing. We have heard for years that 

all this consolidation is necessary to become more efficient. If it has 

been so, we would have seen less in the margins with the same 

data series excluding adding seasonings to fajita meat. That is not 

part of it. We have seen widening margins because of market 

power. It is a poorly performing sector, and the consolidation apologists were wrong. 

Mr. BULLARD. Mr. Chairman, if you would look at Figure 3 in my 

written comments, you would find that his depiction of the production in the U.S. is wrong as well; that, in fact, in the last few years 

the production of domestic beef produced from domestic cattle is 

about the same as it was back in the early 1980’s, mid-1980’s. 

We have not seen a consummate increase in the production of 

beef while we have witnessed an alarming contraction in the number of cattle producers and the loss of our herd. 

It simply is not true, and the chart is documented with USDA 

data to show it. 

Thank you. 

Mr. BALTO. Just to tie the loop on one other thing, just so nobody 

in this room is mistaken, these prices are not set. I mean, retailers 

do not exercise some kind of market power. That is not where the 

margin is coming in. As you well know and everybody knows, supermarket retailers are an intensely competitive market where 

32 

they have extremely small margins, and if there are increases in 

price, it is not substantially on the retail level. 

Mr. HUNT. Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman KOHL. Yes, sir, Mr. Hunt. 

Mr. HUNT. I frankly do not know where to start, but I am not 

a practicing economist, but my family still is in the business, 

whether they be cow/calf producers, farmer feeders, they run 

feedlots, and certainly we are involved in processing. But I have a 

problem with the assumption—of leaving out the assumption that 

drought had anything to do with our supply of cattle within the 

United States. 

In addition to that, we have seen record cow/calf prices in the 

last 5 to 10 years. You know what? I am happy for that. That is 

good for my family. That is good for our industry. Our goal is to 

add value to the top line. 

We also know that our costs are going up dramatically, the costs 

of our inputs, the costs of our transportation. The only way that we 

as an industry can grow back is to add dollars to the top line. 

Additionally, I am not—I may have misunderstood the answer, 

but what I thought I heard was the retailer was not taking the 

margin with the assumption the packer was. It is very documented 

that we have seen the worst packer margins in probably the last 

30 years, in the last 3 years since BSE was discovered. 

Chairman KOHL. All right. Mr. Batista, is it true that the Brazilian Government has subsidized your acquisitions of National and 

Smithfield—or Swift? 

Mr. BATISTA. No, Senator, to my knowledge that is not the case. 

JBS today is a public company. We have had investments from 

BNDES, a federal development bank, in Brazil. BNDES, a federal 

public company, has normal investments in JBS stock and has also 

extended JBS modest loans at competitive rates. JBS is a public 

company, and BNDES has some participation, but there was a public offer and there are a lot of JBS shares traded on the Sao Paulo 

stock exchange in Brazil. I believe that a lot of U.S. investors have 

JBS shares. 

Chairman KOHL. Mr. Stumo, Mr. Hunt in his testimony made 

the point that investment is needed in beef processing, and only 

JBS is willing to make that investment. Do you believe that there 

is merit in that argument? 

Mr. STUMO. If this were a mere asset purchase of a company that 

was in trouble, it would be asset value plus maybe a premium, 

which is the opportunity cost, the investment. My understanding 

is—and I am not going to die on this sword, but my understanding 

is that the premiums—USPB shares were trading at 110, 120 

among producers. It was nearly, you know, 21⁄2 to 3 times the price. 

It is a typical premium you would see when you are procuring market power, not merely buying assets of a firm that is in trouble. 

You see this causation argument between, well, firms are changing hands with other companies, thus the market is competitive. I 

do not know where that comes from. There is no economic text that 

would even support such a theory. You have firms changing hands 

if they are doing well, if they are doing worse. 

If you have a new firm coming in, they will buy at an asset price 

plus a little bit of premium. But if they are buying market power, 

33 

it is worth a lot more because you are closing down a competitor. 

And that is what is happening here in my view. 

Chairman KOHL. Well, thank you, gentlemen. It has been a good 

hearing. We will leave the record open for a week. 

After hearing all the testimony, I remain concerned about the 

sharp consolidation in the meatpacking industry caused by this acquisition. I believe that these deals run the risk of substantially 

harming the cattle market. I hope very much that the Department 

of Justice continues to look at this and decides in a manner unlike 

what I believe that they are heading in the direction of. 

But, at any rate, it has been good to have you. I think you have 

shed a lot of light, and we will do all we can to see that justice is 

served. 

Thank you all for being here. 

[Whereupon, at 4:22 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Questions and answers and submissions for the record follow.] 

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