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USDA issued on February 15th the final rule for the mandatory electronic dairy product price reporting, whichappeared in the Federal Register.

The rule was mostly unchanged from the proposed rule issued last July, and did several things that NMPF had supported:

• It completed the move of dairy product price reporting from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).  AMS staff are more familiar with the reporting plants and their operations, and so are better equipped to integrate data collection and audit.
• It makes reporting completely web-based, which would speed the data collection process.
• It moves up the plant reporting deadline each week from noon (local time) on Wednesday to noon (local time) on Tuesday, with some adjustments for when Monday or Tuesday fell on a holiday.
• It moves up USDA’s normal publication deadline each week from 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday to 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, again with possible adjustment for holidays.
• Beginning April 18, Federal order price announcements will also move from Friday to 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, allowing about 40% of Class price announcements to be based on more current data than they were before.

The last Dairy Product Prices report will be issued by NASS for the last time on Friday, March 30. The following week, on Wednesday, April 4, it will be issued by AMS for the first time.

New product price reporting and announcement schedules and information about the new data collection system were posted on the AMS website.