Business as Usual at GIPSA

[Oldtimer]

Business as Usual at GIPSA
February 23, 2006

In a private meeting the Administrator of GIPSA, James Link, said that he did not feel that the public wanted GIPSA to be a policeman. Link heads the agency recently disgraced by the resignation of Deputy Administrator JoAnn Waterfield under whose auspices the Packers & Stockyards division pretended to investigate complaints and logged normal activities such as letter writing as an investigation in order to keep up the appearance that GIPSA was doing its job. The USDA's Office of Inspector General uncovered the malfeasance.

Link's statement shows us that the only thing that has changed at GIPSA is a little bit of cosmetics. At the same meeting, Link also confirmed that he would not ask the plaintiffs in Pickett v. Tyson for the massive amount of data they collected for the trial in order for GIPSA to do an investigation of its own. GIPSA has not ever looked at the database of over a million transactions collected by Pickett. If Link has his way, they never will. It seems that he wishes to remain willingly ignorant.

In September 2000, the GAO issued a report on the activities of GIPSA and made some recommendations for change. In that report the GAO said, "USDA has authority under the Packers and Stockyards Act, which has been delegated to GIPSA, to initiate administrative actions to halt unfair and anticompetitive practices by packers in livestock marketing and meatpacking."

The OIG report in January of this year criticized GIPSA for not implementing recommendations from previous reports including the GAO report of 2000. We now know that Mr. Link will continue to disregard the GAO's recommendations. When judges don't do the job they are supposed to, we get upset. We have the same attitude toward members of the Executive Branch who refuse to do theirs. Swift and aggressive Congressional action is called for.

http://www.thestevensonreport.com/

 

[Oldtimer]

The investigator (Phyllis Fong) did say that altho they found no evidence of criminal activity- they also were not investigating for that....

I wonder what high paying corporate job JoAnn will end up getting in payment for her years of "gross mismanagement"??!!
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Thursday, March 9, 2006 · Last updated 3:36 p.m. PT

Ex-Agriculture Dept. official off hook

By LIBBy QUAID
AP FOOD AND FARM WRITER

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department has decided not to take action against a former agency official who blocked investigations into predatory pricing in the nation's $120 billion livestock trade.

Gross mismanagement, not criminal conduct, by JoAnn Waterfield is to blame for several years of obstruction, department Inspector General Phyllis Fong told the Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday.

"I'm not sure what further action could be taken," said Fong, who released an audit on the problems in January. "What we found I guess we would best characterize as tremendous mismanagement."

There was "no indication of criminal conduct," Fong added.

The department is making big changes in response to the report, said James E. Link, the new administrator of the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration.

"We have already begun making the fundamental changes in the culture of the organization," Link told senators, describing a series of steps he has taken.

Employees were frustrated with management and felt they couldn't do their jobs, Link has said. He's created a private Web site for employees to confide in him.

Senators were wary of his pledges. Different government investigators have been calling for changes at GIPSA since 1997.

"I hope you'll understand if I'm a little skeptical," Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the panel's senior Democrat, told Link. "We've heard promises before. USDA has a long history ... of never following through."

The latest audit said Waterfield stopped complaints from being filed or prosecuted. She pressured employees to create an appearance of strong enforcement by logging day-to-day activity - sending letters or making phone calls - as investigations, according to the audit.

Waterfield, who quit abruptly before the audit was released, did not return a call from The Associated Press. She spent about 14 years at the Agriculture Department, the last five as deputy administrator for the Packers and Stockyards Program, part of GIPSA.

That program oversees a $120 billion industry and is supposed to investigate practices that inhibit competition, unfairness and deception in the livestock, meatpacking and poultry trade.

Lawmakers asked if Waterfield's superiors knew about the obstruction. The inspector general said they did not. "We have no evidence there was tremendous involvement of the ranks above her in any kind of sense," Fong said.

Harkin, who requested the audit, asked why department lawyers failed to notice or alert higher-ups that competition investigations were not being referred to them.

Mary Hobbie, the department's assistant general counsel on trade practices, pointed out that other types of cases, financial and trade investigations, have been pursued.

But it is competition, not finances or trade practices, that concerns Congress most. Many lawmakers are alarmed about the level of consolidation among meatpackers.

"If our local ranchers can only market to huge meatpackers who appear to be coordinating prices with each other, there's definitely something wrong," said Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo.

Four companies control more than 80 percent of the market, said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.

 

[Oldtimer]

I took this from David Kruse's Commstock report- It pretty well sums up the situation with GIPSA and USDA as a whole...Even tho some in the US still don't see the handwriting that USDA is completely owned and run by the Major Packers- I believe the Japanese do...That is the reason the USDA has lost all credibility with them too

The Bush administration has been taking a lot of criticism for incompetence, but there is no greater incompetence or outright sabotaging of government responsibility than in GIPSA. Major packers own the USDA, and they own key centers of power in the U.S. House. U.S. Senators know that. USDA has zero credibility. Any study done by USDA or GIPSA is a waste of taxpayer time and money. They only way to fix USDA is to rhetorically shoot them all and start over. The agency has been totally compromised. That's not going to happen. This will all eventually blow over and the "industry" control of USDA will come through unscathed by this. They won't let a Theodore Roosevelt near USDA. At this point, that's what it would take to change the culture at the USDA.