Beef Checkoff Recall Petition
Seeing Mixed Response At Sales

By David Bowser

Millions of dollars are collected each year from American cattlemen to be spent promoting beef, but now there is a petition drive underway to stop it.

The organizations that spend the money are mounting a determined campaign to protect the program, but some producers are questioning whether the beef checkoff system is working as it was advertised.

Officials with the Livestock Marketing Association, consisting mainly of auction barn owners, say they are hearing increased complaints about the checkoff program. The association's board of directors voted Feb. 21 to recommend a producer referendum on whether to continue the program.

"After a decade of the checkoff, and nearly one billion dollars collected from producers, what have producers received for their checkoff dollars?" asks LMA President William E. Irons, Jr. "With continued erosion of demand for beef and beef products, how much longer can the industry afford to go in this direction?

"We believe it's time for those producers to decide whether they want to continue paying."

Complaints about the dollar-a-head checkoff are a common occurrence for P.R. Bass, Hemphill County rancher and owner of the Shamrock Livestock Auction.

"Most of the complaints on the thing are they don't think they're seeing any advertisement," Bass says of some of the customers he’s talked with. "They can't see them doing anything with their money is the main thing that's wrong with it."

Bass says the complaint he hears most often is that there is a lack of advertising for beef.

"If they'd kept on with it like it was when they first started promoting that stuff, I think they'd be fine with it, but everybody's got it in their heads that they quit," Bass says. "The only advertisements you see are nearly the same ones that they came out with when they first started this thing."

He says there is also the perception that the Beef Board has built up a war chest and is not spending it to promote beef.

"They've got too much surplus money built up that they haven't used, and that's not what the thing was for," Bass says. "It wasn't supposed to be a money-making deal for them. Everybody feels like that's what it's turning into. It was supposed to be a money-making deal for producers."

Like many cattlemen, Bass is sensitive to advertising by competing meats.

"You can just watch television at home," he says. "Take chicken. It gets a lot more advertisement than beef does. We don't even have anything like that."

As with many sale barn owners, Bass also objects to collecting the checkoff dollars. Too many of his customers think he gets to keep it, whereas the Beef Board wants the money as quickly as they can get it.

"What gripes me is at the barns here," Bass says. "We do all the work for them. We do the collecting for them. We do the bookwork for them. They don't do nothing. If something happens around here that you're a week late before you send it, you'd think you were going to jail. That's what I dislike about it. They could come into these barns and do some advertising and stuff, but they don't do anything. They come around here wanting you to go to some seminar and bring your wife for $360 apiece and tell you what kind of good deal that is."

While Bass, like other livestock auctions, charges a fee for selling the cattle that move through his facilities, he also collects fees for other groups. Like a retail merchant collecting sales taxes and forwarding them to the state, Bass feels caught in the middle.

"We've got enough things like beef checkoff and brand inspection," Bass says. "All your cattle have to be bled. It all amounts to more than I charge to sell their cattle. I have to collect and do all the bookwork for every bit of that."

Nor is Bass the only one who thinks there is a problem with the checkoff.

"We had a petition last year and passed it around and got lots of signatures on it and sent it in," says Betty Calvert with Colorado City Livestock Market.

But they haven't gotten one this year, she says.

"I think we're all in favor of getting rid of the checkoff," she says. "I don't think most people believe it's doing much good."

She says of the people she's talked to, they just don't feel they're getting their money's worth out of it.

"I don't know where the money goes, but myself, I can't see what good they're doing," she says. "I think most of the customers feel the same way."

But many sales barns are reporting mixed reactions to the petition.

"There's been one around here," says Jay Taylor with Amarillo Livestock Auction. "It's not getting a lot of support."

Not all auction barns are participating in the petition drive. Some don't have petitions out. Others have petition information available but say they have customers on both sides of the issue.

One auction barn in eastern New Mexico says they don't have a petition out, another says they have one out but the reaction to it has not been strong.

"We've got it," said the manager who asked that his name not be used. "We sure do."

But he says his customers are split right down the middle on the issue. Many of his customers oppose the checkoff, but they're not adamant about it.

"They understand that it probably does do some good," he says. "They just feel like it doesn't do enough good."

Larry Wing of Cattlemen's Livestock Commission Company in Dalhart, Texas, says he has the petition information sitting on the counter, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in it. Some of his customers think it's needed, he says. Others don't, but none of them seem particularly passionate about it one way or the other.

"There is a form that they can sign and cards they can mail in," he says. "They may have mailed in some cards, but I don't see any names on this form."

The biggest complaint he says he's heard from producers is giving up a dollar a head when they can't make any money on their cattle.

Irons says LMA was one of the original and strongest supporters of the dollar per head checkoff, and today, America's livestock markets continue to collect the majority of the dollars that fund the program.

Many producers and independent cattle feeders believe they are not getting their fair share of the food dollar, Irons says. Studies show beef's market share has been declining for several years, Irons noted.

At the same time, he says, checkoff dollars are being spent, directly and indirectly, on projects that would primarily benefit the packer and the retailer, and on industry policies that have more to do with further concentrating and integrating the industry, thus further eroding competitive price discovery, than promoting beef.

"With four packers controlling virtually the entire fed cattle market, and a total unwillingness to support mandatory price reporting, should producer dollars be spent to research new products that would mainly benefit one segment of the industry?" Irons asks.

"The continued drive to move independent producers into alliances with packers is simply a move toward vertical integration. Now it's time we hear from the people the checkoff is intended to help. Let the people who pay, have the final say."

"Cattle producers can exercise their right to decide whether to continue the mandatory beef checkoff by signing petitions now available at Livestock Marketing Association's member businesses across the U.S.," says John McBride, director of information for the LMA.

To trigger a referendum, a minimum of 10 percent of eligible producers must sign the LMA petitions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates tyat figure at a minimum of 116,791 signatures.

If the required number of signatures is collected by LMA, USDA will verify the signatures and their validity. The Secretary of Agriculture will then decide whether to conduct the requested referendum, say USDA officials.

Petitions can be signed by individuals who certify that they are cattle producers and subject to the dollar-per-head assessment. Each petition signer needs to date his or her printed name and signature, full address and telephone number (including area code), and his or her company, if applicable. Producers may only sign one petition seeking the referendum.

The signatures must be collected during a one year period, which began May 15.