000114 USDA Faces Squabble Over Pork Ads

Washington - The Agriculture Department, caught between squabbling hog farmers, is struggling to validate petitions that seek a referendum on the fees that producers pay for the advertising campaign that touts pork as “the other white meat.”

Opponents of the fees submitted petitions last May containing 19,043 signatures, far more than the 14,986 required under government rules to call a referendum. But defenders of the program question whether many of the signatures are valid, and USDA has yet to validate the petitions.

Kathleen Merrigan, administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, is meeting today with farmers on both sides of the issue to explain the department's delay in validating the petitions. She said that she hopes to finish reviewing the petitions later this month.

Many of the signatures were illegible, and some petitions were missing addresses and other information, Merrigan said.

“It doesn't appear at this time that anyone is pleased with all that we've done. ... Sometimes that happens when you are in the middle and you are trying to run a fair and objective process,” she said.

USDA used a telemarketing firm to contact a statistically valid sample of 1,400 people who signed the petitions, but some refused to cooperate with the callers and others denied signing petitions. The department last month sent followup letters to 428 of the petition signers pleading with them to cooperate.

Opponents of the “checkoff fees” demanded that the department hold a referendum on the $48 million program by March. They say the program, which pays for research as well as advertising, say it has done little to stimulate pork consumption and mostly benefits meat processors and large, corporate farm operations.

“At best this is bureaucratic bungling. At worse, the USDA is trying to derail the democratic process,” said Mark McDowell, a Hampton, Iowa, farmer.

Producers are required to pay 45 cents for every $100 of animal value. The money goes to the quasi-governmental National Pork Board, which contracts promotion services through the National Pork Producers Council.

Opponents of the program say they get very little for the fees. Pork consumption has been relatively flat despite the advertising, rising from 51.5 pounds per person in 1985 to 53.4 pounds last year.

The program's supporters, led by the National Pork Producers Council, contend it has benefited all farmers by improving the reputation of pork with consumers and sponsoring research that has yielded leaner pigs.

If the fee is abolished, “the only people who will benefit are the largest players in the industry who have the capacity in their own integrated structures to do their own promotion and to maintain their own research and to keep it to themselves,” said John McNutt, a West Branch, Iowa, farmer who is president of the producers council.

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