For Immediate Release: May 22, 2026
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
Please find below R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary that describes the background to the DOJ/USDA/White House press conference, highlighting the ongoing investigation into potential antitrust violations by the concentrated beef packers. It is in three formats: written, audio and video. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.
Unprecedented Focus on Concentration Problem
May 22, 2026
For decades, beef packer concentration was a silent killer of America’s cattle farming and ranching operations and beef price fairness for American consumers. Market concentration reduced competition, shrinking marketing opportunities for cattle producers and distorting both cattle and beef prices. This concentration was a major contributor to the demise of hundreds of thousands of U.S. cattle farms and ranches, the historic shrinking of the U.S. cattle herd, and the disconnect between consumer beef prices and cattle prices.
For over two decades, organizations like R-CALF USA have constantly issued warnings to policymakers about the imminent danger facing America’s food security and economy if marketplace concentration continues unabated. But the warnings by R-CALF USA and other groups were ignored by policymakers and scoffed at by the multinational beef packers and their beef industry lobbyists.
It’s been over a century since policymakers lifted a meaningful finger to address concentration in the U.S. beef packing sector. It was in the early 1900s when the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice initiated a probing investigation into antitrust and anticompetitive marketing practices of the highly concentrated beef packers, which were far less concentrated at the time than they are today. Following that century-old investigation, Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 to put an end to market-destroying antitrust conduct and farmer and rancher-destroying anticompetitive practices.
And for over a century thereafter, every Congress and every Administration coasted, apparently believing the problem had been forever solved; or, to them, it just didn’t matter. But the problem wasn’t solved, and during the past generation or so, beef packer concentration soared and cattle farmers and ranchers were forced out of business in droves.
But 2026 is unfolding as the year potentially marking an end to the public and government’s decades-long indifference to beef packer concentration. There is now a renewed and intense interest in reversing the damages that unrestrained beef packer concentration is wreaking upon the U.S. economy, U.S. farmers and ranchers, U.S. consumers, and national security.
A national press conference was held on May 4, 2026, by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the White House, and it included cattle rancher Shad Sullivan, a leader in the R-CALF USA organization. The federal officials highlighted their ongoing investigation into potential collusion and price manipulation by both domestic and foreign beef packers. Foreign-owned beef packers were particularly singled out as a threat to U.S. sovereignty, and JBS, the world’s largest beef packer, was admonished for its practice of handing out money “like it’s candy,” presumably to curry government favors.
Very importantly, while the federal officials vowed to put an end to collusion and price manipulation by the concentrated meatpackers, they emphasized that they need the public’s help to do so. They’re calling upon the public to provide investigators with information through the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Whistleblower Program. The DOJ’s Antitrust Whistleblower Program is confidential, and it financially rewards people who report antitrust crimes, such as price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocation, as well as for other anticompetitive offenses that result in criminal fines or other monetary recoveries of $1 million or more. Those who provide such information can receive up to 30% of the fine or recovery.
The reason the DOJ is calling for whistleblowers to help in the investigation was recently explained by White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Marketing Peter Navarro, who participated in the press conference and who previously wrote that in such a highly concentrated marketplace as in the fed cattle market, true price signals are hidden, and “word of slaughter volumes and slowdowns travels fast, making coordination easy to pull off and almost impossible to prove.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche further explained during the press conference that “people coming forward with information they have is one of the best and most efficient ways [the DOJ] has to solve antitrust violations.”
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said during the press conference that “perhaps more than ever before in American history, we now realize the threat to our sovereignty, to our freedom, [and] to our liberty as we look in total at the consolidation in America[.]”
And so it is that the national press conference focusing specifically on beef packer concentration is historic, as never during the past century has such a coordinated and focused multi-agency investigation been undertaken to restore competitive markets for both cattle farmers and ranchers and consumers.
If anyone has information that can help the Department of Justice identify antitrust and anticompetitive practices in the cattle market, please visit “Department of Justice Antitrust Whistleblower Program” and submit your information online.
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R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary educates and informs both consumers and producers about timely issues important to the U.S. cattle and sheep industries and rural America.
Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only trade association in the United States. It is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle and sheep industries. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or call 406-252-2516.