We’re starting to see the light at the end of the farm bill tunnel. We were able to pass the 2007 farm bill out of committee so it can be debated by the full Senate.

A longstanding priority of mine has passed and was included in the farm bill today. My amendment makes it unlawful for a packer to own or feed livestock intended for slaughter. The Packer Ban excludes single pack entities and packers that are too small to participate in the Mandatory Price Reporting program. The bill also exempts farmer cooperatives where the members own, feed, or control the livestock themselves.

Outlawing packer ownership of livestock would make sure the forces of the marketplace would work for the benefit of the farmer just as much as it does for the slaughterhouse. You could even say that packer ownership of livestock frustrates and compromises the marketplace so the farmer doesn’t get a fair price.

Earlier this year I had a conversation with the CEO of a major slaughter house and he said to me, “You wonder why we own livestock? Well, we own livestock so that when prices are high we kill our own and when prices are low we buy from the farmer.”

Another amendment of mine that was included in the bill clarifies a new potentially burdensome federal regulation that lists propane as a “chemical of interest” requiring costly reporting for farmers and rural homeowners. I first brought this to the attention of Homeland Security officials in June.

Propane tanks are used by virtually every farm across the country and by many small businesses in rural areas that are not supplied by natural gas. A potential burden of thousands of dollars upon individual farmers and small businesses as a preliminary step to determine whether or not they are ‘high risk’ and subject to the stringent requirements of the regulations would be an unduly burdensome financial expenditure.

Today I also brought up the need to help black farmers who were denied entry into the Pigford v. Glickman settlement, which ended a discrimination lawsuit between African American farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Now that we’ve got the bill to the full Senate, I plan to push my amendment to place a hard cap of $250,000 on farm payments. I’m looking forward to the debate so we can get a farm bill passed and producers can put their own plans in place for their farming operations.