View Rule

Overall Description of Deadline: With the passage of S. 3656, the Mandatory Price Reporting Act of 2010, the Secretary of Agriculture is required to amend chapter 3 of subtitle B of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 by adding a new section for mandatory reporting of wholesale pork cuts. To make these amendments, the Secretary was directed to promulgate a final rule no later than one and a half years after the date of the enactment of the Act. Accordingly, a final rule will be promulgated by March 28, 2012.

Statement of Need: Implementation of mandatory pork reporting is required by Congress. Congress delegated responsibility to the Secretary for determining what information is necessary and appropriate. The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Pub. L. 110-234) directed the Secretary to conduct a study to determine advantages, drawbacks, and potential implementation issues associated with adopting mandatory wholesale pork reporting. The report from this study generally concluded that voluntary wholesale pork price reporting is thin and becoming thinner, and some degree of support for moving to mandatory price reporting exists at every segment of the industry interviewed. The report was delivered to Congress on March 25, 2010.

Summary of the Legal Basis: Livestock Mandatory Reporting is authorized under the Agricultural Marketing Act (7 U.S.C. 1635 to 1636). The Livestock and Seed Program of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has day-to-day responsibility for collecting and disseminating LMR data.

Alternatives: There are no alternatives, as this rulemaking is a matter of law based on the Mandatory Price Reporting Act of 2010.

Anticipated Costs and Benefits: Estimation of costs will follow the previous methodology used in earlier Livestock Mandatory Reporting rulemaking. The focus of the cost estimation is the burden placed on reporting companies in providing pork marketing data to the Livestock and Seed Program. Previous rulemaking cost estimates of boxed beef reporting of similar data found the burden to be an annual total of 65 hours in additional reporting requirements per firm. Because no official USDA grade standards are used in the marketing of pork, and fewer cutting styles, the burden for pork reporting firms in comparison with beef reporting firms could be lower. However, the impact is not truly known at this stage.