The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies on Wednesday marked up and passed its fiscal year 2013 agriculture appropriations bill.
The National Chicken Council appreciated the work of Congress last year to limit most of the final regulations of the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rule to the requirements of the 2008 Farm Bill, as Congress intended. However, provisions remained in the final rule that are outside of the scope of what Congress mandated in the Farm Bill, and the subcommittee, led by Chairman Jack Kingston (R-GA), revisited the issue and addressed those provisions in their mark-up FY2013 agriculture spending bill.
The bill, which passed out of the subcommittee, included language that continues to prevent GIPSA from issuing a final rule defining injury to competition and from finalizing a rule on the contractual growout structure of the chicken industry.
The bill also includes language making the rule consistent with the legal intention of the 2008 Farm Bill by requiring GIPSA to rescind provisions about placing pullets, breeders, and laying hens under the agency’s authority; defining a capital investment over the life of a growing arrangement; and requiring that a dealer provide notice 90 days before suspending delivery of a flock for more than 15 days.
All the protections that are in the Packers and Stockyards Act and the provisions that were statutorily mandated in the 2008 Farm Bill are still in place and not impacted by these technical corrections.
The full Committee on Appropriations will take-up the bill in the near future.
