By Vaughn Meyer with Angela Huffman In 1984, U.S. cattle producers voted to establish the Beef Checkoff Program as a means to promote their own product, U.S. beef. From the very beginning the beef checkoff was touted as a producer self-help program financed by all producers through a dollar per head assessment on every animal sold. From the very beginning cattle producers began questioning the underlying motive of their checkoff. It soon became apparent that importers, retailers and Read More …
OCM Moves Forward in Freedom of Information Case despite USDA’s Attempt to Conceal NCBA’s Abuses of Beef Checkoff Funds LINCOLN, NE – March 31, 2017 was the USDA’s court-ordered deadline to choose transparency or secrecy in a lawsuit over records from an audit initiated in 2011 of the federal Beef Checkoff Program. It chose secrecy. Out of a total of 12,341 pages of financial records from the audit and sought by the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) through Read More …
By Vaughn Meyer, OCM Board of Directors U.S. cattle producers are rightly questioning why we are forced to promote foreign beef with our personal checkoff dollars. The Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) will tell you the number one reason the checkoff doesn’t specifically promote “United States beef” is because the Beef Act & Order – the enabling legislation under which our checkoff operates – also requires collection of a dollar per head on imported cattle. As a six-year former member Read More …
On August 11th, OCM will return to the Airport Embassy Suites in Kansas City for our annual convention. There, in October of 1998, OCM was founded and declared its mission to be reestablishing fair and competitive markets for agriculture. Fair and competitive markets are what OCM still strives for; not as an end in themselves but as a critical contributor to the survival of independent family agriculture, a tenable rural America and our national food security. In my Read More …
On Tuesday, NCBA’s attempt to delay and disrupt OCM’s search for the truth hit a snag when a federal court greatly limited its role in a lawsuit for beef checkoff records. A federal court allowed the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) a limited entry into a lawsuit brought by OCM to obtain audit records of the beef checkoff program. NCBA had been seeking full party status. In part the court’s order stated, “NCBA’s participation in this case is limited Read More …
On Friday, September 30, 2016, attorneys for the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) filed their response in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to the National Cattleman Beef Association’s (NCBA) late attempt to intervene in a case filed by OCM to obtain records from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) related to Beef Checkoff Program activities. In October of 2014, OCM filed the original complaint for injunctive relief, demanding the OIG for the U.S. Department Read More …
– by Lee Pitts, Livestock Market Digest Sometimes you have to really dig to find a story. And then sometimes it finds you. In the past few weeks I’ve received several phone calls from people associated with the beef checkoff. This alone is a minor miracle because I haven’t exactly been on speaking terms with these folks. Suffice it to say, I’m not on the Christmas card list of the NCBA or the Beef Board. At first I Read More …
