Yale law school is offering a free online conference on January 16, 2021, “Big Ag & Antitrust: Competition Policy for a Sustainable and Humane Food System,” 6 am (ouch!) to 2 pm. I’m signed up! Six am is early, but it’s better than the event I attended that was set in Europe.

Bill Bullard, the CEO of R-CALF USA, has been invited to present a paper updating a 2013 publication of his in The South Dakota Law Review, Under Siege: The U.S. Live Cattle Industry. Reading it could give you a taste of what the conference is about — or perhaps a hearty meal. It’s 51 dense pages with footnotes. Here’s the abstract:

Although the largest U.S. agricultural sector—the live cattle industry—is
still comprised of hundreds of thousands of independent producers, it is
currently on a trajectory to become a vertically integrated supply chain
controlled by just a handful of dominant meatpackers. This is the fate already
suffered by the nation’s hog and poultry industries within which once
competitive markets have been replaced with corporate command and control
and opportunities for independent livestock businesses have largely disappeared.
Only by renewing the nation’s long lost appetite for antitrust enforcement and
other legal actions to preserve livestock market competition can the ailing cattle
industry be revitalized for future generations.