Pork:
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The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking to end payments made to the National Pork Producers Council (Pork Council) for the purchase of the registered mark “Pork, The Other White Meat.” HSUS v. Vilsack, No. 1:12-cv-01582 (U.S. Dist. Ct., D.D.C., filed September 24, 2012).
According to the complaint, which details the circumstances leading to the mark’s creation, development and use, the Pork Council should not have retained ownership of the mark, and the $60-million, 20-year contract for its purchase should have been terminated when USDA decided to retire the mark and create a new one. HSUS contends that the contract is funded with pork-producer checkoff program dollars, which cannot be used for lobbying. Because the Pork Council is a lobbying organization, HSUS claims that the ongoing payments under the purchase agreement violate federal law.
HSUS seeks a declaration that these expenditures of checkoff funds are unlawful, recovery of the funds already distributed to the Pork Council, an injunction to stop USDA from further “unlawful authorizations or expenditures of checkoff funds related to the . . . marks,” attorney’s fees, and costs. Among other matters, HSUS claims that it has standing to bring the action because it is forced to spend money countering the Pork Council’s lobbying and other activities, particularly regarding its own initiatives to halt the use of gestation cages in pork production. The complaint asserts in this regard, “Since HSUS resources would otherwise be spent on advocacy, legislation, and education related to improving the treatment of pigs and other animals, Defendant’s unlawful conduct directly impedes Plaintiff’s activities, and causes a significant drain on its resources and time.” An individual plaintiff, Iowa pork-producer Harvey Dillenburg, is allegedly harmed by unlawful checkoff expenditures and the use of such money by a “lobbying organization that pushes for policies that Mr. Dillenburg considers harmful to his operations as an independent producer.”
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Citing lack of progress on a succession of legislative and regulatory fronts, the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) is now looking to the courts. During the group’s annual meeting last week, Fred Stokes, OCM president and director, announced that OCM and the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) were joining forces to seek an injunction against USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the Beef Promotion Operating Committee, with the aim of ending the use of checkoff funds by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), the major contractor to the checkoff.
On Friday, a lawsuit was filed in District Court in Kansas seeking a court order prohibiting any beef promotion program dollars to go to NCBA. The lawsuit alleges that the NCBA receives a large majority of checkoff-funded projects, and alleges that the CBB operating committee awards the contracts to NCBA and that 10 of the 20 seats on the committee are held by NCBA members.
Among HSUS’s contributions to the effort were legal expertise and funding, Stokes said during a press conference last week. OCM had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for checkoff documents, following which HSUS legal experts advised a lawsuit. OCM was then able to engage the Polsenelli Shugart law firm to take on the case on a pro bono basis.
“NCBA has essentially taken all of our own money ”” that we have been forced to pay in to the checkoff by law ”" and used it to lobby Congress for an agricultural system, an industrialized cattle system that is contrary to the independent cattle producer’s interest," Mike Callicrate, a Kansas cattle feeder and OCM vice president, told the Associated Press on Friday.
