WASHINGTON — Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has joined Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin in asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to open an antitrust investigation into the meatpacking industry amid the coronavirus closures.
In a letter sent to the FTC Wednesday, the senators said that the monopolization of the industry has left the food supply chain vulnerable to disruption.
The senators said that four companies control 85% of all beef processing in the U.S. and three companies control 63% of pork processing.
A majority of meat processing has been concentrated into a handful of "mega-slaughterhouses," they said, noting that the closure of just three pork plants due to COVID-19 has shut down 15% of the country's pork production.
“As a result, farmers cannot process their livestock—which are costly to maintain—and consumers risk seeing shortages at grocery stores, exacerbating the food insecurity that all too many Americans are currently experiencing,” Hawley and Baldwin wrote.
“These harms might have been mitigated if the meatpacking industry was less concentrated. The current COVID-19 crisis has exposed the vulnerabilities of American supply chains and the importance of ensuring that, when disaster strikes, America’s food supplies are not in the hands of a few, mostly foreign-based firms."
On Tuesday, Hawley also asked the Department of Justice to begin a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon, claiming it was using predatory and exclusionary data tactics to build a monopoly.
"These practices are alarming for America’s small businesses even under ordinary circumstances," Hawley wrote. "But at a time when most small retail businesses must rely on Amazon because of coronavirus-related shutdowns, predatory data practices threaten these businesses’ very existence."
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