More Pork Pulling
The National Pork Producers Council, Washington, DC, won the latest court battle over its $50 million marketing program.
The Campaign for Family Farms, a Columbia, MO-based coalition of hog farmers, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture last March over mandatory checkoff fees that fund marketing — despite a February 2001 settlement between the two sides that kept the checkoffs going.
The settlement, which separated the checkoff-funded National Pork Board from the producers’ council, resolved a September 2000 referendum in which hog farmers voted to stop mandatory checkoff fees (of 45 cents for every $100 of sales).
The producers’ council argued that checkoff opponents didn’t have the required 15 percent of hog farmers’ consent for the referendum, and that then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman didn’t have authority to hold it without that consent. Glickman’s predecessor, Ann Veneman, has continued checkoffs.
The latest challenge from hog farmers failed in December in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, so checkoffs will continue under USDA guidance. But that judge set a November 2002 court date for another suit filed by the Campaign for Family Farms that claims checkoffs violate First Amendment rights to free speech.
