C2-Lancastef Farming, Saturday, September 30, 2000
LMA Blasts Latest USDA Delay
In Calling For Beef Checkoff Vote
KANSAS CITY, Mo. Fol
lowing a recent USDA decision
that will push a vote on the beef
checkoff into at least 2001, Live
stock Marketing Association
President John Willis said, “It’s
time to start treating American
beef producers like citizens, and
not suspects.”
Willis commented following
notification from USDA’s Agri
cultural Marketing Service,
which has had LMA’s referen
dum petitions for 10 months.
AMS said the petition valida
tion/verification process will
now be turned over to an outside
accounting firm.
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“Our understanding,” Willis
said, “is that USDA will take
bids from national accounting
firms to verify the petition sig
natures. USDA will require that
the process be completed by
Dec. 1, with an incentive bonus
if it’s completed by Nov. 3.
“That means we will have
had numerous primary elec
tions, two national political con
ventions, a Presidential election,
and elections in SO states, in less
time than it will take USDA to
decide one simple question: do
beef producers have the right to
decide whether to keep spending
their own money on the
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checkoff?”
Willis added that the valida
tion procedures USD A is requir
ing the accounting firm to use
“are a recipe for failure.”
Among other things, these pro
cedures will require producers
who signed the petitions to
prove, with documents, that
they sold cattle during 1998 or
1999.
The contractor’s work, USDA
says in documents provided to
LMA, must have a “maximum
error rate” of 0 percent, and
must all be done by mail survey.
“Mr. Secretary,” Willis wrote in
a letter to USDA Secretary Dan
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Glickman, “to how many of the
mail surveys which come into
your home do you respond?” es
pecially when they come “from
someone not personally known
to you?”
And how likely, Willis asked
Glickman, are you to mail some
one you don’t know “personal
financial documents” such as a
bill of sale?
LMA believes, Willis wrote,
“that the error rate inherent in
this type of survey is far larger
than any error rate in connec
tion with petition signatures,”
and that the “errors inherent in
the survey techniques” will be
blamed on those seeking a
checkoff, just as they were
blamed on producers seeking a
pork checkoff referendum.
The failure of this validation
process, Willis said, “will be
used to justify not calling a re
ferendum. That result will be to
tally unjust and unacceptable.”
LMA, which led the national
drive to obtain a referendum
vote, delivered 146,000 petitions
to USDA in November 1999. Of
these, 126,000 were signed
within a qualifying period.
In addition to the paper peti
tions, LMA provided USDA
with a CD-ROM disk, into
which all of the petitions had
been entered in a Microsoft da
tabase format, so they could be
handled expeditiously by
USDA. Instead, the database
itself become the subject of a
five-month “verification”
project, and an additional justi
fication for delay.
“This process has gone on
long enough,” Willis said. “The
hundreds of thousands of pro
ducers who signed our petitions
are now asking, ‘What has
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USD A been doing for almost a
year? And why do taxpayer dol
lars continue to be spent on a
process USDA is supposed to
have been handling for the past
ten months?
“Instead of putting these sig
natures under a microscope,
USDA should be investigating
the millions of producer dollars
being illegally spent on so-called
‘producer communications,’
which use checkoff money as
campaign funds to tell produc
ers how wonderful the checkoff
is.”
The petition signers have been
under a cloud of suspicion for
far too long, he said, while
USDA’s delays and mishandling
of the verification process are
the real issues. “At a minimum,
we think producers should get
the ‘benefit of the doubt,’”
Willis said. “We’re merely
asking for USDA to stop consid
ering ‘vote’ a four-letter word.”
He pointed out that in the 10
months USDA has had the LMA
petitions, about $44 million has
been collected and spent by the
beef promotion and research
program. “Until the agency
gives producer a vote, sadly,
what this industry has is a
checkoff program, without
checks and balances.
“Finally,” Willis said, “pro
ducers will be asked for their
vote in this fall’s national elec
tions. They should ask the can
didates and particularly their
current members of Congress
why USDA should be allowed to
continue to ignore their statu
tory responsibility to enforce the
Beef Act and Order, and drag
out this process. Time has run
out on this process, and it’s time
for those who pay, to have the
final say immediately.”
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