NCBA Hires Two Firms
To Battle Referendum

KEARNEY, Neb. — The National Cattlemen's Beef Association Checkoff Working Committee member Merlyn Carlson of Lodgepole, Neb., told the Nebraska Beef Council Board last Thursday that two political strategy firms have been hired to develop an "education" campaign to combat a petition drive seeking a referendum on the beef checkoff program.

The checkoff generates about $81 million nationally each year.

The petition drive to force the checkoff vote was started by the Livestock Marketing Association, a 1200-member Kansas City-based national trade association.

Petitions are being ciculated seeking 116,000 signatures, about 10 percent of U.S. cattle producers and the required amount to be turned in to the U.S. secretary of agriculture by May 15 to force a referendum.

Carlson said if the petitions meet the signature and geographic distribution requirements, there would be a referendum vote in 2000. The last referendum was in 1988, and the checkoff of $1 per head at sale was retained.

Carlson said NCBA committee members had wanted to hold off on a pro-checkoff campaign to see if a referendum was called, but the consulting firms advised them to move forward now to dissuade producers from signing the petitions in the first place.

Sallie Atkins, interim executive director of the Nebraska Beef Council, said no beef checkoff funds would be used for petition or referendum work by the state or national beef councils or NCBA.

A Livestock Marketing Association brochure says the petition drive was started after the LMA Board failed to get its issues addressed, including a concern that checkoff funds are being used to form alliances between producers and packers.

"We continue to see checkoff dollars being spent directly and indirectly on projects that primarily benefit the packer and retailer; and on industry policies that have more to do with further concentrating and integrating the industry, thus further eroding competitive price discovery, rather than promoting beef," it says.

The sheet also says that while checkoff-funded projects have benefited the industry, "It is hard ... to ignore the fact that after nearly one billion producer dollars have been invested over the past decade, beef demand is still declining."

In Nebraska, support for the referendum petition is stronger in the Sandhills and west, checkoff officials said.

Ann Bruntz of Friend, one of six Nebraskans on the national Cattlemen's Beef Board, said: "In eastern Nebraska, we don't hear much about it. But I have family out west, and gauging it by that (what she's heard), there will be a referendum."