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NCBA says USDA grants are another piece to processing bottleneck puzzle
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says the recently announced grants from the USDA are a big win for small, independent processing facilities. Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs for NCBA says this is one piece to the processing capacity puzzle they’ve been working on for two years.
“It is money that is intended to help small, state-inspected facilities that would like to get up to that federal standard to market their product across state lines,” he says. “That’s been a large part of this conversation – how do we grow those state-inspected plants.”
He tells Brownfield it’s not a silver bullet fix, and a multipronged approach will be needed to alleviate the processing bottleneck. “We still need to continue our efforts through legislation, and working with USDA to free up more money for new plant expansion,” he says. “Directed at those smaller facilities to make sure the new cost to opening a packing plant is not only available to the Big 4.”
The competitive grant funds will be available through the new Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grant program. Lane says the structure of the program is very similar to that of the RAMP UP Act, language NCBA worked to get included in the appropriations bill that is now funding the USDA’s efforts.
