No sooner had the Government's first rollback of livestock prices gone into effect last week than the nation faced a shortage of beef. In the major U.S. stockyards, cattle receipts dropped more than 25% below last year. In Chicago, Swift, Armour, Wilson and Cudahy cut their buying of beef to a dribble, laid off thousands of workers, closed down beef operations. The meatpackers' explanation: they could not buy beef and still obey OPS regulations.
Under the rollback, packers were required to pay an average of 10% less for their beef over the next few weeks; the hitch was that market prices...
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