Following President Biden's Executive Order, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack announced significant investments to expand the nation's meat and poultry processing capabilities.

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"At the Department of Agriculture we utilize $500 million dollars in the forms of grants, loans, loan guarantees and technical assistance, and planning assistance to assist those who are considering or thinking about developing independent processing capacity in the United States in beef, poultry, and pork."

And an additional $150 million dollar investment focuses on small and very small processing facilities. Vilsack noted these investments are, "going to create a much more resilient system, a much more competitive system, and hopefully a fairer system for farmers."

Vilsack added the hope is this will also provide key information on market conditions.

"Take a look at other ways in which we can provide a more competitive market with additional price discovery by making sure that we have a number of processing facilities and plants in the country that can provide us information that will allows us to have a better understanding of what the market is."

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