Packers and Stockyards Act
The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 (7 U.S.C. §§ 181-229b; P&S Act) regulates meatpacking, livestock dealers, market agencies, live poultry dealers, and swine contractors to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices, giving undue preferences, apportioning supply, manipulating prices, or creating a monopoly. It was enacted following the release in 1919 of the Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the meatpacking industry. History and passage As the outbreak of World War I occurred and the cost of living rose, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the FTC to investigate the industry from the "hoof to the table" to determine whether or not there were any "manipulations, controls, trusts, combinations, or restraints out of harmony with the law or the public interest." The FTC reported packers were manipulating markets, restricting flow of foods, controlling the price of dressed meat, defrauding producers and consumers of food and crushing competition. The FTC, in fact, recommended governmental ownership of the stockyards and their related facilities. The meat packing industry had also become a prime concern of Wilson's Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer. After threatening an antitrust suit, in February 1920 Palmer managed to force the "Big Five" packers (Armour, Cudahy, Morris, Swift and Wilson) to agree to a consent decree under the Sherman Antitrust Act which drove the packers out of all non-meat production, including stockyards, warehouses, wholesale and retail meat. Agitation for legislation to regulate the packers persisted into the Warren Harding administration despite the decree. The United States Congress sought to protect farm profits through the Emergency Tariff of 1921 on May 27. Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act on August 15, 1921, as H.R. 6320 and the law went into effect in September 1921. Congress would go on to pass the Future Trading Act the next week and granted farmers' co-ops broad antitrust immunity in the Capper–Volstead Act on February 18, 1922. The Act's purpose at the time it was passed was to "regulate interstate and foreign commerce in live stock, live-stock produce, dairy products, poultry, poultry products, and eggs, and for other purposes." It prohibited packers from engaging in unfair and deceptive practices, giving undue preferences to persons or localities, apportioning supply among packers in restraint of commerce, manipulating prices, creating a monopoly or conspiring to aid in unlawful acts. The Act also made stockyards quasi-public utilities and required yard officers, agents and employees to register with the government. Stockyards were forbidden from dealing in the livestock they handled, and required them to maintain accurate weights and measures and pay shippers promptly. However, not all stockyards were under the jurisdiction of the Act. Only those with pen space larger than twenty thousand square feet were regulated. Today, the Act's scope has expanded to regulate the activity of livestock dealers, market agencies, live poultry dealers and swine contractors as well as meatpackers. Interpretation Court interpretation The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the act in Stafford v. Wallace (1922). Chief Justice William Howard Taft reasoned the act was a valid exercise