11/05/02
By MARK POWELL
On news that a federal judge had declared the national pork checkoff “unconstitutional and rotten” and ordered an end to it, area farmers were surprised and disappointed.
Jennifer Debnam, a Kent County, Md., hog farmer, said the Maryland Pork Producers Association depends on funds from the checkoff for the organization’s activities aimed at promoting pork. Debnam said Maryland’s association of hog producers gets about $10,000 from the national pork checkoff. “Without it, we’d have to run a (promotional) program with a volunteer staff,” she said.
Currently MPPA hires Edgewater, Md.-based consultant Lynne Hoot to coordinate activities. Hoot, who has long been an active representative of Maryland grain producers, soil conservation districts, agribusinesses and the pork producers, said that in isolation Maryland’s hog farmers can do very little in promotional efforts. There are about 50 large hog operations in the state and about 200 hog farms in total.
Hoot said the MPPA is involved with shows that promote pork to restaurants and consumers. But, the $54 million national pork checkoff spends money extensively advertising “Pork, the Other White Meat” in the Mid-Atlantic region — a major consumer area.
William Malkus, a Cambridge, Md., hog farmer, said he’s a “big supporter of checkoffs” in general. “Without checkoffs we wouldn’t have a lot of the research and promotion that we have now.” He added that his hogs are sold to Pennsylvania-based pork processor Hatfield, which in turns uses “Pork, the Other White Meat” in promotional efforts.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Enslen ruled that the pork checkoff violates hog farmers’ First Amendment freedom of speech rights. A group of hog farmers in Michigan had challenged the mandatory checkoff (45 cents for every $100 of a pig’s value at the time of sale).
They complained that the checkoff primarily supports large, corporate hog farms, such as Virginia’s Smithfield.
The judge agreed with the farmers that their money — as an extension of their beliefs and free speech — was being spent, unfairly, without their consent. The judge wrote: “The government has been made tyrannical by forcing men and women to pay for messages they detest. Such a system at the bottom is unconstitutional and rotten.”
The checkoff, without a stay from another judge, will stop being collected on Nov. 24. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, saying that checkoffs — pork, beef, soybeans, for example — are effective marketing tools for agriculture, said the USDA was consulting with the Justice Department to consider its options.
Dave Roper, an Idaho hog farmer and president of the National Pork Producers Council, said the NPPC will seek a stay of the judge’s decision.
The pork checkoff has been challenged before. 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 NPPC sued USDA to challenge that referendum and won. Under that agreement, the USDA was to survey hog farmers by 2003 to determine whether 15 percent or more would want another referendum.
Other checkoffs have been challenged recently too, including the beef checkoff. Most significantly, last year the Supreme Court overturned a checkoff program on mushroom farmers as unconstitutional.
Some checkoffs, such as that on grain in Maryland, are refundable to the producer upon request.
Hoot and others say that because of that provision, those checkoffs are not in jeopardy.