Cattle farmers and ranchers have appealed a federal judge’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is best suited to remedy any shell game that exists in the meat processing industry.
“The USDA possesses experience and expertise in dealing with Qualified State Beef Councils (QSBC) and their budgets that this and all federal district courts lack,” wrote U.S. District Court of Montana Chief Justice Brian Morris in his March ruling.
Representing 5,800 cattle farmers and ranchers in 43 states, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF USA) sued Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, the USDA and the Montana Beef Council, alleging that the national Beef Checkoff Program is being operated unconstitutionally because it forces ranchers and cattlemen to foot the bill for promoting foreign meat to American consumers.
“The Beef Checkoff Program is one that requires every cattle producer to pay $1 per head for every animal that they sell and the government then takes half the money to the national level for purposes of promoting and marketing and researching beef,” said Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA. “We’re being compelled to fund private speech and this private speech does not distinguish between domestic produced beef and imported beef so consequently it forces us cattle producers to help market our competitors product, which is foreign beef.”
The lower federal trial court decision also noted that the USDA would be better suited than a federal district court to parse budget line items and remedy any potential abuse of third-party funds by QSBCs, however Bullard claims that the government must have complete control over speech from third-parties who receive money from QSBCs just as the government has complete control of QSBC speech.
“Unfortunately, the government is not responsive to the desires of independent American ranchers and instead continues to support and promote multinational corporations that benefit from the beef checkoff program,” Bullard told the Southern California Record. “This program we now know, as the court has determined, has been operating in violation of the constitution for more than 30 years ever since its inception in 1985. So, this is a serious, serious matter that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is simply turning a deaf ear towards and has paid no attention to the concerns raised by independent producers.”
R-CALF USA is now litigating its cause before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
“Our members want to be able to promote to U.S. consumers beef that is exclusively born, raised and harvested in the United States but the Beef Checkoff Program won't allow that to happen because it will only promote a generic product and therefore members are compelled to promote and advertise their competitor’s product, which is inherently wrong,” Bullard said in an interview.
The appeal brief of R-CALF USA is due on August 31 while the USDA must reply by September 30 unless the set deadlines are extended.
“There's been numerous calls for investigations into the disparity between the value of cattle that cattle producers receive and the record high prices that consumers are now paying for beef,” said Bullard. “We've had joint letters from the Senate and members of the House that have called upon the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice and even the Fderal Trade Commission to investigate packer conduct to determine if there was price gouging or price fixing.”