Author: Mike Callicrate

Bait and Switch

Mike Callicrate

What can we as eaters do to encourage a better food system? In today’s broken corporate-controlled food system, more and more people want to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced. The biggest industrial food companies are well aware of this fact and clearly see how consumer demand has shifted towards local sourcing of food over other attributes like antibiotic and hormone free. The world’s biggest food companies, including meat packers, processors, food distributors and Read More …

The Facts About Higher and Lower Food Prices in Industrial Animal Agriculture

Mike Callicrate

Dear Friends, Please find attached our new research related to egg prices and industrial agriculture as it relates to claims made in the robust debate surrounding State Question 777. As ever, our goal is discern fact from fiction in a nonpartisan manner. We believe the two attached sheets with infographics reveal a compelling (there’s that word!) snapshot of what’s really happening with regard to food prices. A hat tip to our director of education, Brian Ted Jones, for Read More …

Letter of Support for Legislative Action to Provide Meaningful Reforms of Checkoff Programs

Mike Callicrate

July 14, 2016 Dear Members of Congress: We, the undersigned organizations, businesses and individuals call on Congress to support Senators Booker’s and Lee’s S. 3201 and Senator Lee’s S. 3200. These bills address the demonstrated, egregious marketplace abuses committed by the commodity checkoff programs (“checkoff programs”). Checkoff programs were established to serve as mechanisms by which agricultural producers pool money for common promotional and research purposes. Fees are mandatory, from the smallest local farmer to the biggest factory Read More …

Supporters Urge Congress to Take Action and Pass Meaningful Commodity Checkoff Program Reform

Mike Callicrate

Joint News Release Contact: Bill Bullard (406-252-2516) Fred Stokes: (601-527-2459) July 14, 2016 Supporters Urge Congress to Take Action and Pass Meaningful Commodity Checkoff Program Reform Washington, DC – More than 140 organizations, ranchers, farmers and businesses applaud Senators Booker and Lee for filing legislation that, when passed, will stop commodity checkoff program abuses. Yesterday, the Senators filed the Commodity Checkoff Program Improvement Act (S. 3201), which would put an end to the most egregious abuses committed by the Read More …

Evaluating My Beef Checkoff Return on Investment

Mike Callicrate

In 1985 most cattlemen proudly acknowledged the passage of the Beef Promotion Act and Order that authorized a $1 per head checkoff assessment (Beef Checkoff) for the promotion of our own product, beef. These were exciting times with great expectations for improving both beef demand and severely depressed cattle markets. The passage of the Act and Order culminated many years of congressional debate and wrangling which began in 1972. Many changes were made to the Act and Order Read More …

Senator Warren’s Speech on Monopoly

Mike Callicrate

Yesterday, straight off her high-profile campaign appearance Monday with Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave a keynote address about industry consolidation in the American economy at a conference at the Capitol put on by New America’s Open Markets program. Though the speech has so far gotten only a modicum of attention—the press being more interested in litigating Donald Trump’s Pocahontas taunts—it has the potential to change the course of the presidential contest. Her speech begins at minute 56:45 Read More …

Populism With a Brain : Ten old/new ideas to give power back to the people.

Mike Callicrate

by Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman published in the Washington Monthly The National Review recently described Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as “two populist peas in a pod.” This was not a compliment. Across the political spectrum, people stick the “populist” label on politicians they see as exploiting the worst resentments and envies of some tribe or another. The segregationist George Wallace, by this reckoning, was a populist. So, too, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Yet there is a Read More …

Ban On Meat Packer Ownership: Too Little, Too Late

Mike Callicrate

By Mike Callicrate Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a longtime advocate for fair markets, is once again reintroducing a bill that would make it unlawful for meat packers to own livestock more than seven days prior to slaughter. Similar legislation has been introduced before, but the powerful packer lobby has always succeeded in killing it. Aside from whether the bill actually has a chance this time, there’s another question to consider. If Congress bans meat packers from owing livestock, Read More …