Checkoff

Today's the big day for the <a href="http://www.beefboard.org/dsp/dsp_locationContent.cfm?locationId=1055" target="_blank">beef checkoff program</a>. Today the Supreme Court is going to <a title="Next on Supreme Court menu: beef and free speech" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1208/p03s01-usju.html" target="_blank">hear the case</a> on the constitutionality of the program. The particular article I linked I found humourous on many levels.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>For years, beef was considered the bad boy of American cuisine. Rising health concerns about red meat and soaring prices in the 1980s plunged the beef industry into crisis.<br />n<br />nThe problem got so bad that in 1985, Congress passed the Beef Act – a law aimed at improving the image of steaks, burgers, and even pot roast. The centerpiece of the effort was a generic advertisement: "Beef: It's What's for Dinner."<br />n<br />n The ad helped turn things around. Since 1998, beef consumption in the US has risen 20 percent, according to one academic study. But now questions have emerged about how Congress chose to fund the well-known beef advertisements.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThey make it sound like singly handedly the beef checkoff program and the the advertising from it turned around beefs image and saved us all. While I don't think it hurt, it didn't save the world for cattle producers. Americans ever changing wants and desires are what brought beef back from its slump. It's cyclic and it will happen again but the checkoffs advertising had very little to do with it. Besides advertising the money collected also funds beef nutrition and safety research and this probably helped much more than the advertising did on slowly changing Americans perceptions on beef.<br />n<br />nI've mentioned before that while I don't have a problem with the checkoff I can understand why a lot of people do. Originally when it was voted in the little guys like the cow-calf man had a large say in how it operated. Then someone (I was never sure where it came from but I think it was the Federal government) decided the <a href="http://www.beef.org/" target="_blank"><acronym title="National Cattlemans Beef Association"><acronym title="National Cattlemans Beef Association, shills for the big meat packers">NCBA</acronym></acronym></a> needed to take it out of the governments hands and vest it as part of the <acronym title="National Cattlemans Beef Association, shills for the big meat packers">NCBA</acronym>. Since the <acronym title="National Cattlemans Beef Association, shills for the big meat packers">NCBA</acronym> is controlled and owned by the big feeders and packers the whole checkoff program is now controlled by them for their benifit and not for the benifit of the little guys too. This is where the problem with the system lies. I have always said if they would strip the beef board from the <acronym title="National Cattlemans Beef Association, shills for the big meat packers">NCBA</acronym> and return it to an independent orginazation then the lawsuit would probably be setteled. But since that will never happen the Supreme Court gets to decide. It will be interesting to see how it turns out but I bet the Checkoff will be killed as a violation of free speech by the Supreme Court.<br />n<br />nLast funny thing in the article. Does anybody know out there which protien source is the main competitor to beef?<br />n<br />n<blockquote>Those other protein sources? Chicken and fish.</blockquote><br />n<br />nYou got it right. PORK!!! The other white meat and the one not listed at all in the article. It would be curious to know why they ommitted it.<br />n<br />n<b>There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. Mohandas Gandhi</b>