021046 Judge Says Gov't Pork Fees Illegal

Grand Rapids, MI - A federal judge has declared the U.S. Department of Agriculture's pork-checkoff program "unconstitutional and rotten," ordering an end to the fee on hogs that funds a pork-promotion program.

All U.S. hog farmers pay the fee when hogs are sold. The $54 million program, which started in 1986, is best known for its promotion of pork as "the other white meat."

Small hog farmers challenged the program, arguing that much of the money collected from the checkoffs was spent to promote pork raised by large, corporate-owned operations.

U.S. District Judge Richard A. Enslen ruled that the program violated hog farmers' First Amendment free speech and association rights.

"The government has been made tyrannical by forcing men and women to pay for messages they detest," the judge wrote. "Such a system is at the bottom unconstitutional and rotten."

Enslen ordered collection of the fees halted as of Nov. 24.

Rhonda Perry, a hog farmer in Armstrong, Mo., and a representative of the plaintiff group Campaign for Family Farms, declared the ruling "a victory for family farm hog producers all across the country."

The ruling disappointed Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, who said Monday that such commodities programs are "effective tools for market enhancement."

The USDA was consulting with the Department of Justice to determine its next step, spokeswoman Alisa Harrison said. As it stands, the agency would be required to abide by the judge's order to stop collecting the checkoffs next month.

The promotion program is financed through a mandatory fee, called a "checkoff," of about 45 cents for every $100 of a pig's value when it is sold.

In 2000, then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman ordered a referendum on the program and hog farmers voted 15,951 to 14,396 to eliminate it.

The National Pork Producers Council and Michigan Pork Producers, groups that represent primarily large hog operations, sued the USDA, challenging the referendum. In settling the lawsuit in February 2001, Veneman, who succeeded Glickman, said the checkoff program would continue.

That brought a countersuit from the Campaign for Family Farms, a coalition of groups representing small hog farms, challenging the settlement and the constitutionality of the program.

The president of the National Pork Producers Council, Dave Roper, a pork producer from Kimberly, Idaho, said Monday his group would seek a stay of Enslen's ruling.

In June, a federal judge in South Dakota ruled that a similar checkoff program for beef producers was unconstitutional.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court voided a checkoff program for mushrooms as unconstitutional. But the high court has upheld such a program for fruit trees.

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