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“The
checkoff issue calls attention to the radical split between large
and small farmers.”
-- New York Times
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
and the other member groups of the Campaign for Family Farms have
been fighting for the last six years to end the mandatory pork checkoff.
The mandatory pork checkoff is a failed,
unjust, and undemocratic program that has fueled the growth of the
largest hog factory corporations and overall corporate concentration
in the hog industry. In 1998-99, more than 19,000 hog farmers, working
with Iowa CCI & the Campaign for Family Farms, signed a petition
calling for a referendum to terminate the program.
In September 2000, America’s hog farmers
voted 53% to 47% to terminate the pork checkoff in a nationwide
referendum conducted by USDA, despite the fact that the National
Pork Producers Council spent more than $4 million to save the program.
In Iowa, over 7,000 hog farmers participated
in the referendum, and 60% voted to end the program. Iowa CCI members
participated directly in the work to end the checkoff by signing
and circulating petitions, voting and turning out other hog farmers
to vote, and spreading the truth about the failed mandatory pork
checkoff across rural America.
Then, in a move that outraged hog farmers
around the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut a back
room deal with the National Pork Producers Council in February 2001
that threw out the vote and forced hog farmers to keep paying the
checkoff on every hog they sell - a million dollars a week, about
$50 million a year.
We’ve since carried the campaign into
the courts. Specifically, the Campaign for Family Farm’s lawsuit
maintains that the mandatory pork checkoff violates the U.S. Constitution
and infringes on hog producers’ right to free speech by forcing
them to pay into a program they believe supports factory-style hog
production, corporate control of the industry, and is detrimental
to their interests.
We won in Federal District Court in Michigan
in October 2002 and then in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in
Cincinnati in October 2003. We’ve had great lawyers to conduct
our case from the Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG) in St.
Paul, Minnesota who have been with us from the beginning. Meanwhile,
a similar suit against the mandatory beef checkoff was also winning
in federal courts.
The Bush Administration specifically asked
that the pork checkoff case not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
On May 24, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case challenging
the constitutionality of the mandatory beef checkoff program. This
is important to hog farmers because the outcome of the beef checkoff
case will likely determine the future of the pork checkoff.
In October, the Campaign for Family Farms, joined by 49 farm groups
with members in all 50 states, filed a friend of the court brief
with the Supreme Court asking the high court to uphold lower court
decisions that found the mandatory beef checkoff unconstitutional
and terminated the program. (To
read the press release, click here.) The Supreme Court will
hear oral arguments on the mandatory beef checkoff on December 8,
with a decision in early 2005.
We are confident that we will prevail and
both the beef and pork checkoff programs will be terminated. We’ve
won every round so far - petition drive, nationwide referendum,
district and appellate courts - and we won’t be denied now.
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