It's a simple situation with serious consequences: powerful meatpackers have been raising their own livestock so they don't need to purchase on an open market.

But packer ownership of livestock may soon be brought to an end.

The Senate Agriculture Committee's 2007 Farm Bill, if passed in its current form, will ban packer ownership of livestock. The ban, pushed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was passed as part of a large "En Bloc" amendment to the bill Wednesday.

In explaining to the committee why such a ban is needed, Grassley told a story about a CEO of a meat-packing company who told him his company owns livestock "because when prices are high we kill our own, when prices are low we buy from the farmer."

Grassley has sought to pass such a ban for many years, and came close to achieving just that in 2002, the last time Congress wrote a Farm Bill. In that bill five years ago, a ban on packer ownership of livestock passed in the Senate but was removed in conference with the U.S. House of Representatives.

But this year the House looks a lot different than it did in those early years of the Bush Administration. Time will tell if representatives now favor such a ban more than their predecessors.

Under the provision passed Wednesday, packers could no longer "own or feed livestock directly, through a subsidiary, or through an arrangement that gives the packer operational, managerial, or supervisory control over the livestock, or over the farming operation that produces the livestock." Packers will be left with a 14-day window to own livestock before slaughter. Most small, independent meat-packers will be exempted from the ban, as well as farmer-owned cooperatives in which members own, feed or control the livestock themselves.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Keenum said that he expects a lot of debate about the packer ban. "We think it's going to be very controversial," said Keenum. He said it is certain to be a "conferenceable" issue between the House and Senate.