010134 Pork Producers Sue USDA Over Checkoff

Grand Rapids, MI - A coalition of pork producers has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture after thousands of the nation's hog farmers voted to end the government's $54 million pork-checkoff program.

The program, which started in 1986 and is supervised by the USDA, is financed through a mandatory fee, called a “checkoff,” of 45 cents for every $100 of a pig's value when it is sold.

On Jan. 11, the USDA released the results of a referendum held last year in which hog farmers voted 15,951 to 14,396 to kill the program. Opponents say the program has done little to stimulate pork consumption and mostly benefits meat processors and large corporate farms.

The National Pork Producers Council, the Michigan Pork Producers Association and various independent pork producers filed the lawsuit the next day in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids. It seeks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would keep the checkoff program alive.

Based on the referendum vote, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman wants the program terminated and has directed the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, which supervises the agency's promotions boards, to do so.

The money for the program goes to the quasi-governmental National Pork Board, which contracts promotional services through the National Pork Producers Council, one of the lawsuit's plaintiffs.

The program is best known for its promotion of pork as “the other white meat.” The fees collected from U.S. hog farmers are also used for financing research and consumer information.

In a news release issued Thursday, council officials said they expected other state pork organizations and independent producers to join them in the legal battle.

The statement said the “USDA acted unlawfully in holding a binding referendum despite having no legal authority to do so.”

“Pork producers should be outraged at such mismanagement of the referendum and intervention into the pork checkoff by the government,” said Craig Jarolimek, the council's president and a pork producer in Forest River, N.D.

Susan McAvoy, a USDA spokeswoman in Washington, DC, declined to comment specifically about the lawsuit. She said, however, the agency's inspector general, Roger C. Viadero, investigated claims by the National Pork Producers Council of referendum irregularities and found no evidence supporting them.

“The outcome of the referendum clearly demonstrates that the pork checkoff program does not have the support of its producers,” McAvoy said.

Chris Gabriele, a spokesman for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, which supports abolishing the program, said the pork producers' suit was groundless because Glickman was entitled to use his discretion in ordering the referendum. Hog farmers voted on it from Aug. 18 through Sept. 21.

In a statement issued Jan. 11, Glickman explained why he ordered the referendum. He said, in part: “As a matter of basic fairness, I believe that producers deserve the opportunity to vote on this checkoff program.”

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