Beef ads challenged after ruling against mushroom promotions
By The Associated Press,
freedomforum.org staff
07.20.01
WASHINGTON — The beef-promotion program known for the slogan "Beef, It's What's for Dinner" could be the first victim of a Supreme Court ruling that it was unconstitutional for the government to force mushroom producers to pay for industry advertising.
Groups opposed to the beef program, which is funded through mandatory fees on producers, said yesterday they would amend a lawsuit they have filed in federal court in South Dakota and ask the judge to rule that the program violates First Amendment protections for free speech. The groups filed the lawsuit to force a cattle-producer vote on whether to continue the program.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann said the lawsuit may be pointless, given the Supreme Court's ruling last month in U.S. v. United Foods.
The beef program is "unconstitutional and unfair," said Linda Rauser, a North Dakota rancher and chairwoman of the Western Organization of Resource Councils, one of the plaintiffs.
Some ranchers who oppose and have refused to pay the fee say the beef association uses the money to champion an agenda that favors large meat packers and producers over family ranchers. Supporters of the fee say the opponents benefit from the beef promotions even though they aren't paying the fees.
Before the mushroom decision, the government warned the Supreme Court that the case could threaten similar programs administered by the Agriculture Department for beef, milk, pork, eggs and cotton.
Lynn Cornwell, president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which is partly funded by the cattle fee, said the constitutional challenge would raise the lawsuit "to a destructive new level."
The distinctions between the mushroom and beef programs "are as significant as the difference between mushrooms and beef," she said.
But Kornmann, the South Dakota judge, said in a July 5 letter to the government and the plaintiffs in the beef-program lawsuit that the "advertising for beef may well be much like that for mushrooms.
"I do not want to get further into this case or try the case only to discover that USDA concedes that the entire beef checkoff program is unconstitutional. ... Obviously, neither this court nor USDA are going to ignore an opinion by the Supreme Court."
Cattle producers pay a fee of $1 per cow that raises about $80 million a year for the beef program.
The beef program was authorized by Congress in 1985, and approved by producers in 1988. There has been no referendum since then.
In November 1999, the plaintiffs submitted more than 125,000 signatures of cattle producers to the Agriculture Department, asking for a vote on the program. But in January, the department declared tens of thousands of the signatures void and said there weren't enough valid petitions to force a vote.
The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit last December, accusing the government of delaying the petition-validation process and using the process to prevent a referendum.