(NAFB) – The Cattle Contract Library Act of 2021 introduced this week received support from farm and livestock groups. However, there is one holdout, being R-CALF.

The contract library bill requires beef packers to provide details of the types of forward contracts they use for purchasing fed cattle that are not purchased in the negotiated cash market, which is the price discovery market for the cattle industry. The bill also requires the Department of Agriculture to publicly report the total number of cattle that beef packers have committed to them six months and 12 months into the future.

R-CALF USA’s board of directors reviewed the bill and determined it does not address the competition-disrupting leverage the highly concentrated beef packers now hold over the cattle market and that new methods of cattle procurement in use today by the largest beef packers may fall outside the scope of the bill.

The House Agriculture Committee favorably reported the bill to the full chamber Thursday.