Representative Pramila Jayapal and Senator Cory Booker called out meatpackers and grocery mergers during the Anti-Monopoly Summit in D.C. this week.
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Representative Pramila Jayapal and Senator Cory Booker called out meatpackers and grocery mergers during the Anti-Monopoly Summit in D.C. this week.
September 18, 2025
September 18, 2025 – Democrats in Congress are once again directing attention to an issue that was a major focus of the Biden administration—how consolidation is making food and agriculture companies bigger and more powerful at the expense of farmers and consumers.
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Ten senators and representatives spoke this week at the Anti-Monopoly Summit hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project in Washington D.C. They highlighted consolidation in many sectors, including healthcare and tech, but two of the keynote speakers zeroed in on the food system.
“As you look up and down the food supply chain, you see the effects of consolidation at every single level,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), one of four members of Congress who launched the House Monopoly Busters Caucus in April. “Consolidation in the food industry drives down competition and hurts independent and small players along the way, drives up consumer prices, hurts workers, and, at the end of the day, dramatically increases wealth and income inequality.”
Jayapal talked about four companies controlling the entire beef industry, big food companies that create the illusion of choice with their many brands, and the growing power of mega-grocers like Walmart and Kroger. Representatives from the National Farmers Union, National Grocers Association, and UFCW 3000, a union that represents grocery workers in the Pacific Northwest, discussed the impacts of those issues on their members during a subsequent panel.
Later, Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) took the stage. “In the agricultural world right now, anti-competitive practices are destroying America’s food system and America’s heartland,” he said. “American families do not have access to healthy foods because of this corrupt system.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who also spoke at the event, released a report this week that details eight case studies of what he calls “Trump corporate pardons,” or instances in which he alleges that President Donald Trump gave corporations special treatment based on financial gain. The report points to the administration’s recent decisions to allow the import of sugar from the Central Romana Company, which has been cited for labor violations, and to drop a case against Pepsi that alleged the soda giant sold its products at lower prices to Walmart, hurting smaller, independent grocers.
That case was one of several brought by the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which stepped up antitrust enforcement under Commissioner Lina Kahn. Most significantly, Kahn’s FTC blocked the controversial merger of Kroger and Albertsons, which would have locked in more extreme consolidation in the grocery sector.
The Biden administration also invested in small meat processors and finalized several rules meant to protect farmers from corporate abuse under the Packers and Stockyard Act. Some Republicans in Congress recently tried to attach language to a funding bill to end the implementation of the rules. In August, Trump also revoked Biden’s executive order targeting consolidation.
Democrats are also taking aim at “price gouging,” where companies take advantage of inflation or personal data to bump prices up even higher, an issue that came up during last year’s election. In August, Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act, which would prohibit some of those practices.
So far, all of these efforts are happening on one side of the aisle, but at this week’s summit, both Booker and Jayapal insisted that reigning in corporate power in the food system is a bipartisan issue. “The populist wing of both parties is becoming more and more important,” Jayapal said. “This is not a left versus right struggle. This is actually a top versus everybody else struggle.” (Link to this post.)
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