American Rancher October 31, 2006 The Cattle Producers of Washington and the Oregon Livestock Producers Association are among five state cattle groups that have announced their joint opposition to the recent findings of an Industry Wide Beef Checkoff Task Force. Other organizations are the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, South Dakota Stock Growers Association and Colorado Independent Cattlegrower's Association. Doug Zalesky with the Colorado organization says they support the checkoff but that the outcome of the Task Force, which was put together by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, was pre-determined.
Zalesky: "The membership of that, primarily the majority was of NCBA affiliates and or committees. So it was pretty obvious to us anyway that the outcome of that task force was pre-determined and the task force was set up to make sure that those pre-determined outcomes would happen."
The Task Force recommendations included adopting a beef checkoff referendum model similar to that of the soybean producers, making the checkoff program more inclusive in contracting, and increasing the mandatory checkoff to two dollars a head.
These state organizations say it would be premature to approach Congress about amending the Beef Act until a true, honest and inclusive review of the beef checkoff is conducted.
I'm Bob Hoff.