National Beef Checkoff Petition Committee Seeks Assistance from Beef Checkoff Board and USDA
Billings, Mont. – Leaders of the National Beef Checkoff Petition Committee sent a letter last week to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board (Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB)) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking their assistance in offering more U.S. cattle producers the opportunity to sign the petition for a referendum of the beef checkoff program. There has not been a referendum of the mandatory National Beef Checkoff Program in 35 years.
Addressed to CBB chair
Hugh Sanburg, and the USDA official that oversees the government-controlled
national beef checkoff program, Kahl Sesker, the letter asks the two officials
to share their electronic databases of persons whose contact information the
CBB and USDA have captured through their Web-based platforms as well as the
database the CBB and USDA uses to conduct their annual producer attitude
survey.
Two of the leaders of
the National Beef Checkoff Petition Committee, Bryan Hanson, President of the
South Dakota Livestock Auction Markets Association, and Steve Stratford, Owner
of Stratford Angus, wrote that the contact information in the databases of
checkoff-paying cattle producers possessed by the CBB and USDA would be used to
ensure that every cattle producer is afforded the opportunity to ask for a
referendum through the petition process.
Hanson and Stratford
stated that when the databases are provided, “We could then send each person in
those databases a petition, affording them the opportunity to sign and return.”
The letter identifies
three databases the CBB and USDA control that would be “instrumental in
providing untold numbers of United States cattle producers the opportunity to
exercise their right and privilege to sign a USDA-authorized petition for the
purpose of asking for a referendum of their Beef Checkoff Program.”
Those databases include
contact information for cattle producers who receive the CBB/USDA newsletter The
Drive, the electronic sign-up the CBB/USDA maintains on their beef checkoff
program website to receive questions and comments from cattle producers, and
the list of producers from which they solicit information about producers’
attitudes in the checkoff’s annual producer attitude survey.
The National Beef
Checkoff Petition Committee’s webpage at www.checkoffvote.com currently has about 7,750 signed petitions and committee leaders
indicate thousands of hard-copy petitions have also been received through the
mail. The USDA has stated that 88,269 cattle producers must sign the petition
in order for a producer-initiated referendum to be held.
The committee leaders said the CBB and USDA’s
databases likely include enough names to ensure that the required number of
cattle producers are offered the opportunity to sign the USDA-authorized
petition, which will give producers the first opportunity in 35 years to vote
on the future of the mandatory National Beef Checkoff Program.
Source: R-Calf