POLITICO’s Morning Agriculture — R-CALF WANTS DOJ AND HILL PROBES OF JBS

By Helena Bottemiller Evich | 06/08/2017 10:00 AM EDT

With help from Catherine Boudreau, Brent Griffiths, Esther Whieldon, Annie Snider and Adam Behsudi

R-CALF WANTS DOJ AND HILL PROBES OF JBS: The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund has asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley to examine the U.S. business practices of Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS SA in light of the company’s role in a corruption scandal in Brazil. In a letter to Sessions, Grassley, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and President Trump, R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard notes that two leaders of JBS, the second-largest beef packing company in the U.S., admitted to spending $150 million in bribes and other payments to some 2,000 Brazilian politicians. (One of those executives, the company’s chairman, has since stepped down.)

"JBS admits spending nearly twice as much on unlawful bribes to promote its beef packing business as U.S. cattlemen pay in annual taxes to the mandatory beef checkoff program to promote beef, including the promotion of JBS’s beef," Bullard wrote.

To view R-CALF USA’s request for an investigation and antitrust enforcement action against JBS, CLICK HERE.