02/25/08 Congressional action needed on checkoff

The enhancement of the Beef Checkoff Program is a topic that draws interest and discussion these days. At the Cattle Industry Annual Convention earlier this month delegates voted to ask Congress to approve a process that will allow producers to increase the one dollar per head assessment. Montana rancher Bill Donald is the policy division chairman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. DONALD "All we're asking Congress to do is empower the producers with a referendum process. Then the producers will have to decide themselves whether they want to increase the assessment." NCBA is also asking Congress for other improvements to the beef checkoff. These include establishing a petition/referendum process for future increases in the checkoff assessment to would allow cattlemen to approve or disapprove a proposed increase without taking the question back to Congress. DONALD "Streamline the process so that producers have an easier ability to enact enhancements and then also to change the act to allow for any association to be a contracting agency not just the ones before 1985." Currently some livestock organizations are not eligible to manage checkoff funded programs because they were formed after passage of the 1985 Beef Promotion and Research Act. Today's Idaho Ag News