"In a blatant disregard for democracy, President Bush's Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, has cut a deal with the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) to continue the mandatory pork checkoff program," a news release from Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement complained the day after the USDA ruling.

Hog farmers voted to end the program 15,951 to 14,396 in a referendum in September. The checkoff, under which farmers are required to pay 45 cents for every $100 of pork sales, netted some $54 million last year. But the program has done nothing to improve prices or conditions for smaller producers.

The NPPC, a trade group of "pork producers" run primarily by wealthy hog farmers, receives 91 percent of checkoff funds. The research and marketing campaigns ("Pork, the other white meat") financed with this mandatory tax on all hog farmers mainly benefit these capitalist interests, whose domination of the market has driven many small producers into unfavorable contract arrangements with them, or out of business altogether. Small hog farmers have been devastated by the drop in market prices below their production costs.

The NPPC and others filed suit January 12 asking a federal district judge in Michigan to block termination of the checkoff, which had been ordered by the USDA the day before in line with the results of the referendum. The lawsuit challenged the authority of the USDA to conduct the referendum and charged that the voting process was filled with irregularities.

On January 20, the court issued a "temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction... enjoining the termination of the pork checkoff program until a full and fair hearing has occurred," according to an NPPC spokesman.

The referendum was organized in response to petitions bearing signatures of more than 19,000 hog farmers calling for a vote--well above the 15 percent of all farmers paying into the fund required for such a vote in the 1985 law that established the checkoff program.

Following a decision by the new Bush administration to review all such regulatory decisions taken by the Clinton administration, the USDA decided to reverse its initial ruling to end the checkoff. In a statement the USDA said the agency could not now consider the referendum "binding" because, it asserted, the vote was "not conducted under the provisions...which require that 15 percent of producers and importers must petition" to request it. Further, the agency argued, the program may in fact be benefiting farmers, despite their vote against it.

The USDA chose to negotiate a settlement in the NPPC's lawsuit rather than defend its original ruling in court. The settlement requires the National Pork Board, which is part of the checkoff program, to sever all its ties with the NPPC, allegedly making the new structure "more responsive to producers' needs."

The USDA says it will carry out a survey no earlier than June 2003 to give hog farmers and importers another opportunity to ask for a referendum. If 15 percent request it, USDA says, it will then conduct a referendum within one year to determine if the program will continue.

Larry Ginter, a Rhodes, Iowa, hog farmer and member of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement who has been active in the effort to pass the anti-checkoff referendum, pointed to the common interest of workers and farmers in opposing this combined move of the government and big business.

"The recent announcement to squash the vote to end the mandatory checkoff," he said in an interview, "has the rotten smell of class warfare written all over it. It's the same stench that occurs when the bosses attack workers in a packing plant for uniting to form a union in order to vent their grievances in a unified force."

Pete Seidman is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149 in Marshalltown, Iowa.
 
 
Related articles:
New Jersey farmer fights to keep land
Farmer speaks in Houston on Cuban Revolution
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home