Print Archive | The University of Chicago Business Law Review

Comment

Volume 1.1

Tyson and Leviathan: USDA Rulemaking and the PSA Harm to Competition Requirement

Spencer James Parts

J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School

Many thanks to Clare Downing, Robert Clark and the University of Chicago Business Law Review staff. Thanks also to Professor Randal Picker and to Renic Sloan for their helpful comments, and to Pallavi Guniganti for first introducing me to this topic.

Facing concentration in meatpacking, farmers and ranchers are making increasingly urgent calls for protection from practices they claim make it difficult for them to earn a living. Among the statutes they have turned to for recourse is the Packers and Stockyards Act, a 1921 law that prohibits meatpackers from engaging in unfair, deceptive, or unjustly discriminatory practices. Courts, however, have made PSA cases more difficult to win by requiring that plaintiffs prove “harm to competition” to bring a successful case. Recently, the USDA has intervened in this debate, alternately supporting each side of the harm to competition question in controversial rulemakings, and it is now planning to once again propose a rule saying the PSA does not require harm to competition.