Some of the people who oppose the proposed Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act and the Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act say they don't want to mess up a "good thing." At the University of Missouri, Scott Brown notes that high slaughter levels this year ensure that by January next year the nation's beef cow inventory will be down. In previous cases of down inventories there were high fed and feeder steer price levels for several years following. What other economic relationships will impact prices, Brown asks. Higher prices are a likely outcome, so he urges producers to keep operations in a place where they can take advantage of higher prices to come.

Max Armstrong's Farm Progress America is a daily look at key issues in agriculture. It is produced and presented by Max Armstrong, veteran farm broadcaster and host of This Week in Agribusiness.

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