[Update: A federal court has intervened to stop pork checkoff corruption, and GFI is working with policymakers to support two bills to bring transparency and accountability to checkoff programs]











You’ve probably seen us posting a lot lately about our recent petition to stop government-overseen organizations from standing in the way of more sustainable food solutions.







So, what’s actually going on here? And how does this fit into The Good Food Institute’s mission?





Well, take a seat around the campfire and I’ll tell you a scary story.





First, you should know about the farm promotion programs known as “checkoffs.” Checkoff dollars are collected from producers of certain agricultural commodities to generically promote those commodities. These are the programs responsible for creating some of America’s best-known advertising campaigns, including “Pork. The Other White Meat,” “Got Milk?” and “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner.”





The USDA is responsible for overseeing these programs and making sure checkoff boards don’t use their significant funds to do anything but promote their commodities. Oversight, however, has been questionable at best.





While there are checkoffs for all sorts of commodities from mushrooms to watermelons, the boards associated with animal agriculture have most frequently been caught stepping over the line.





For instance, a 2010 audit of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board revealed that the organization was funneling the majority of its funds—$51 million of the $77 million collected under the program that year, mainly from ranchers—to a separate organization with one of the most powerful beef lobbying arms in the nation. This group (similarly named the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, or NCBA) used these funds to support its lobbying efforts—efforts that promote putting red meat at the center of the plate with no concern for its public health and environmental consequences.





A financial review of the activities concluded that the cattlemen’s association had “breached the firewall” between marketing and lobbying.





The National Pork Board also has a history of shady dealings, paying $60 million in checkoff funds to the National Pork Producers Council under the guise of “buying back” the trademark for an ad campaign it had given away to the council for free years prior. The council is a trade association that defends the use (and overuse) of antibiotics, lifelong confinement of pigs in extremely small cages, and other inhumane and unhealthy policies that keep our food system from moving forward to a more sustainable future.