Last week, the Senate sent the Clarification of Treatment of Electronic Sales of Livestock Act to the White House. The bill amends the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, ensuring the law’s protections cover online livestock auctions. The bill would also make available modern electronic banking options. Per feedstuffs, current law only authorizes the use of checks or wire transfers for livestock sales.

Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, believes passage of the bill will help protect livestock producers who use modern technology for livestock sales. Cochran told feedstuffs, “I am confident that this bipartisan legislation will be signed into law and that the protections it offers to producers will improve livestock transactions.”

Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.), agreed with Cochran and stated, “I’ve seen it firsthand, life on the farm and ranch is changing in the 21st century. We see four-wheelers taking the place of horses, and combines that can do a month’s work in a day—it’s time that our livestock auction laws reflect the world we live in. I am pleased to see my common-sense bipartisan legislation pass to help bring livestock auctions into the 21st century.”

U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, (R-Kan.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, told agwired that the bill “provides clarity to livestock markets that facilitate commerce in the livestock sector and in rural communities across the country by clarifying that modern business practices are permitted under Packers and Stockyards Act.”

The bill was also praised beyond the nation’s capital. Dan Harris, owner of Holton Livestock Exchange and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Livestock Marketing Association, told meatingplace, “Today was a huge step forward for the livestock marketing industry bringing our main regulatory law, which dates back to 1921, into the 21st Century with some common sense updates.”