LMD May 2019

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Riding Herd “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

May 15, 2019 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 61 • No. 5

Even When We Win, We Lose BY LEE PITTS

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here had been two huge lawsuits in my long career in the cattle business dating back to 1973 that I thought, at the time, had the potential to put real price discovery into the cattle valuation equation. Twice I thought that ranchers would finally prevail in court and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the big monopolist packers and retailers were using their market power to reduce the prices paid to ranchers for their cattle. And twice the ranchers did prevail in front of juries. Now you can add a third historic lawsuit to that short list of lawsuits. And once again I’m optimistic that, just as happened the past two times, ranchers will win once again. But, as happened with the others, will some judge then snatch our victory ruthlessly away?

Strike Three Or Grand Slam?

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

On April 23rd R-CALF announced they had launched a lawsuit against the BIG FOUR beef packers, Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company, who collectively purchase and process over 80 percent of the America’s fed cattle. R-CALF just didn’t go down the street and hire the first and cheapest lawyer they ran into. They engaged the services of two antitrust and securities litigation heavyweights, Scott and Scott Attorneys at Law has significant experience in prosecuting antitrust actions throughout the United States and Europe.. The other firm R-CALF hired is Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel and they’ve had lots of experience representing trading firms, brokers and investors in complex antitrust, commodities and securities litigation

Some cowboys have too much tumbleweed in their blood to settle down. throughout the country from its offices in Chicago, Pennsylvania and Michigan. These two legal heavyweights filed their class action lawsuit in federal district court in Chicago on behalf of R-CALF and four cattle-feeding ranchers from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming. R-CALF’s lawsuit alleges that the BIG FOUR violated antitrust laws, the Packers and Stockyards Act, and the Commodity Exchange Act by unlawfully depressing the prices paid to U.S. ranchers. The lawsuit alleges they inflated their own margins and profits illegally from at least January 1, 2015 through the present and the class action lawsuit seeks to recover the losses suffered by two classes believed harmed by the BIG FOUR’S alleged conduct during this period. The first class includes cattle producers who sold fed cattle to any one of the BIG FOUR from Janu-

ary 2015 to the present. The second class consists of traders who transacted live cattle futures or options contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from January 2015 to the present.

Naughty, Naughty R-CALF’s lawsuit, which is supported by witness accounts, including a former employee of one of the BIG FOUR, trade records, and economic evidence, alleges the BIG FOUR conspired to artificially depress fed cattle prices through various means, including: • collectively reducing their slaughter volumes and purchases of cattle sold on the cash market in order to create a glut of slaughter-weight fed cattle; • manipulating the cash cattle trade to reduce price competition amongst themselves, including by enforcing an antiquated queuing convention

through threats of boycott and agreeing to conduct substantially all their weekly cash market purchases during a narrow 30-minute window on Fridays; • transporting cattle over uneconomically long distances, including from Canada and Mexico, in order to depress U.S. fed cattle prices; and • deliberating closing slaughter plants to ensure the underutilization of available U.S. beef packing capacity. These alleged practices are estimated to have depressed fed cattle prices by an average of 7.9% since January 2015, causing significant harm to American ranchers. “R-CALF USA is taking this historic action to fulfill its promise to its members to prevent the BIG FOUR packers from capturing the U.S. cattle market from independent U.S. cattle producers,” said R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard. He added “We have exhausted all other remedies but now, with the expert help of Scott and Scott and Cafferty Clobes, our members’ concerns will be addressed and we hope U.S. cattle ranchers can be compensated for years of significant losses.” The impact of the packers’ conduct on American cattle ranchers has been catastrophcontinued on page two

The Missing BY CANDICE NORWOOD /GOVERNING.COM

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una, I’ll be back. I love you.” Those words are etched in Cissy Strong’s mind when she recalls the last day she saw her younger sister, Rosenda. Cissy and Rosenda are Native American women who live in southern Washington on the Yakama Indian Reservation. On Oct. 2, 2018, the sisters spoke briefly as Rosenda, 31, got ready to head out with a group of friends. One of those friends picked her up around 7 p.m., and they headed to Legends Casino on the reservation. Cissy has not heard from her sister since. “She would never not tell me where she is,” Cissy says. Rosenda is loud and social. She likes to go out with friends, but her four children -- two boys and two girls -- are her world. “They had all her attention,” Cissy says. “She is just a joyful, proud mom.” After four days of calling hospitals, jails, friends and family, Cissy filed a report with tribal police on the Yakama Reservation. At first there was pushback from the officers. “She’s probably still partying,” Cissy recalls them saying. Several days later, the Yakama police and then the FBI launched a search for Rosenda, yielding many questions but few answers. Cissy still hears whispers around town. Rosenda supposedly left the casino with a friend, but no one knows for sure where she might have gone. Rosenda’s photo now circulates on webpag-

es and social media groups for other missing Native Americans. In one widely shared post, 13-year-old Marisa Ellison poses for what looks like a school portrait. Her dark brown hair cascades over her shoulders, and a dimple pierces her left cheek. Ellison vanished from her home in Oklahoma last year, a few weeks after Rosenda Strong. Ellison was found several months later and returned to her family. But the list of other missing women and girls goes on, highlighting a reality that has plagued native communities for generations. Native American women living on reservations are murdered at alarmingly high rates. In some counties, the number is more than 10 times the national average, according to the Department of Justice. Nationwide, murder is the third-leading cause of death for indigenous women. Thousands more face the threat of violence and assault. “I hear these stories almost every day where native mothers are preparing their daughters for when they’re raped,” says Sarah Deer, a lawyer, activist and professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas. “Not ‘if,’ but ‘when.’” Eighty-four percent of American Native and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, according to a 2016 report from the National Institute of Justice. Of that group, more than half experienced sexual violence. Nearly all of these women were continued on page three

by LEE PITTS

I Can Explain Everything

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ny day now I expect to get an e mail from one of the many editors of the magazines and newspapers who run this column informing me they no longer want my essays because I can’t relate to the millennial generation. To which I say, “Their parents can’t even relate to them and they’ve been living in the same house with them for 26 years, so how do they expect me to?” They say this because of... • My continuing reference to things or people that only old geezers like myself have heard of, such as Pall Mall cigarettes, Rexall Drug, soda fountains and the two Andys, Andy Griffith and Andy Williams. • The fact they are unable to reach me on my cell phone, find me on Facebook or “tweet” to me. Maybe that’s because I’m not on Facebook, I don’t twitter tweets and all the phones in our house have something called “cords”. I continue to refer to countries that no longer exist, like Yugoslavia, and sports teams that haven’t been around for decades such as the Seattle Seahawks and New Orleans Jazz. • The handful of millenials who do read my column don’t like it when I make fun of their lip jewelry, colorful tattoos or that they are struggling to repay their $200,000 college loan while writing an advice column on their blog while living in their parent’s basement. • I continue to use words that are no longer used by the general public such as cattywampus, chucklehead, dance hall, varmints, lunch bucket, cooties, gallivanting, persnickety and pipsqueaks. • I also use too many phrases that the majority of Americans have never heard, such as twiddle your thumbs, hubba hubba, jumping Jehosaphat, and tan your hide. When I refer to “eenie meenie mo” my readers confuse them with some hip hop group from New Jersey. • Quite often I refer to breeds or diseases of farm animals that haven’t been around since Hector was a pup. Oops, there I go again, using phrases that no one has ever heard before.

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LMD May 2019 by Livestock Publishers - Issuu