In a lawsuit against the U.S. secretary of agriculture, a federal district judge, Richard Enslen, ruled that the fee, generally known as the "pork checkoff," violated the hog farmers’ right to free speech and association. "Forcing men and women to pay for messages they detest," he said, "is at the bottom unconstitutional and rotten."

Several farm and rural groups in the Midwest formed the Campaign for Family Farms (CFF) in 1998 to fight to end the pork tax. In a national petition drive in 1999, more than 19,000 hog farmers signed a petition calling for a national vote.

In September 2000 hog farmers voted down the tax by a 53 percent margin in a referendum in which more than 30,000 participated.

Under the checkoff, hog farmers are required to pay 45 cents for every $100 of pork sales to the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). The tax brings into the trade association up to $50 million a year. The NPPC, as a trade group of "pork producers" run primarily by wealthy farmers, receives 91 percent of checkoff funds. On Feb. 28, 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) overturned the results of the referendum vote.

At a March 26, 2001 news conference in Washington, farmers’ groups presented an open letter to President George Bush saying the pork checkoff "has not helped independent hog farmers stay in business, hog prices to farmers have steadily fallen since the pork tax was started in 1986, and it uses hog farmers’ money against them to pay for research and media to promote factory farms and agribusiness corporations."

After the USDA overturned the referendum vote, CFF filed a lawsuit against the Agriculture Department including a specific claim that the mandatory pork checkoff violates hog producers’ constitutional rights by infringing on the First Amendment.

From 1990 to 1999 more than 130,000 hog farmers went out of business, according to Agriculture Department statistics, leaving only 98,000.

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, large hog farms--operations with 5,000 hogs or more, which were unknown in the early 1990s--have increased their share of the national swine market. In 1994, some 37 percent had more than 2,000 hogs, whereas in 2000, 79 percent had more than 2,000 hogs.

Larry Ginter, a hog farmer in Rhodes, Iowa, since 1965 and active against the pork tax, explained that the successful fight by hog farmers that led to the federal court ruling "should give small hog farmers some justice as it is a strong ruling for our constitutional rights."

Ginter expected the USDA to appeal the ruling and added, "The fight is not over." He stressed that workers, who are the main consumers, and farmers who raise hogs should join together against the meatpacking bosses and agribusiness corporations.  
 
 
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