The United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A) is offering up to $15 million to 31 states that have signed on to a program to evaluate issues that reduce competition and threaten supply chains in a number of agriculture sectors.
The program is designed to help the state attorneys general to identify and address “anticompetitive market structures in agriculture and related industries” that lead to higher prices and limited choices for consumers and producers.
Not in Canada where the Competition Bureau merely wrings its hands as it approves mergers. And ignores the evidence it has received about anti-competitive deals between GrayRidge and Burnbrae who dominate egg grading in Ontario and some other provinces.
The bipartisan effort stems from a request from more than a dozen state attorneys general who previously asked the U.S.D.A. for help regarding agricultural competition issues.
The new Agricultural Competitive Partnership will study price gouging and other practices that negatively affect consumers when it comes to food, retail, meat and poultry processing and other related industries, the department said.
The research effort will include conflicts of interest among food producers, misuse of intellectual property and anticompetitive barriers across ag supply chains.
U.S.D.A. also is forming a partnership with the non-profit Center for State Enforcement of Antitrust and Consumer Protection Laws that already provides similar support to states.
The American Antitrust Institute also will offer resources to states involved in the project, U.S.DA. added.
