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The dominant private corporations and public policies
shaping the U.S. farm and food system are failing family farmers
and ranchers who produce our food. Farmers and ranchers have lost
income, independence, and ultimately their farms and ranches to
a system tilted in favor of input suppliers and food processors.
The dominant economic and policy institutions are also failing consumers,
who are losing confidence in the safety and quality of their food,
and paying more for packaging, processing and profits than for produce.
Cattle and hog producers, fed up with the positions
taken against their interests by the checkoff-supported National
Pork Producers Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,
organized petition drives to put the pork and beef checkoffs up
for referenda of producers. WORC took a leading role in the fight
to win a referendum on the beef checkoff -- organizing thousands
of cattle producers to sign checkoff petitions -- and supported
the successful effort to force a vote on the pork checkoff.
Both of these efforts ended up in court after producers’
demands for a vote on the beef checkoff, and hog producers’
vote to end the pork checkoff, were thwarted by decisions by the
past and current Secretaries of Agriculture, respectively. A
Supreme Court decision striking down a third checkoff program
– for mushrooms – has given a boost to legal arguments
against the checkoffs and energized groups working to end these
unfair and undemocratic programs. The Supreme Court found the mushroom
checkoff program, which is very similar to the beef and pork checkoff
programs, to be a violation of the First Amendment prohibition against
compelled speech.
The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard
arguments of an appeal by the federal government and the Cattleman's
Beef Board of a lower court decision striking down the beef
checkoff in St. Paul on March 10th, 2003.
Federal appeals court says the dairy checkoff is unconstitutional.
Read
the decision.(pdf-108k)
Read Federal District Court decisions finding both
the beef checkoff
and pork
checkoff programs unconstitutional. A Montana
judge upheld the beef checkoff but ranchers Steve and Jeanne
Charter are appealing that decision.
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