7 U.S.C. § 212 — Prescribing rates and practices to prevent discrimination between intrastate and interstate commerce

This section is a single, undivided rule with no lettered subsections. It applies when the Secretary investigates practices under this subchapter — either through the Secretary's own inquiry, or through an investigation started because a stockyard owner, market agency, or dealer filed a petition asking for one. After a full hearing, if the Secretary finds that a stockyard owner's, market agency's, or dealer's rate, charge, regulation, or practice — covering things like buying, selling on commission or otherwise, receiving, marketing, feeding, holding, delivering, shipping, weighing, or handling livestock not in commerce — causes an undue or unreasonable advantage, prejudice, or preference between persons or places in intrastate livestock commerce versus interstate or foreign livestock commerce, or causes any undue, unjust, or unreasonable discrimination against interstate or foreign livestock commerce, the law declares that forbidden and unlawful. When the Secretary makes that finding, the Secretary must prescribe the rate, charge, regulation, or practice to be followed afterward, set in whatever way the Secretary judges will remove the advantage, preference, or discrimination. Once prescribed, those rates, charges, regulations, or practices must be followed by the stockyard owners, market agencies, or dealers who were parties to the proceeding and affected by it — regardless of what any state law, or a state authority's decision or order, says to the contrary.