Search Results for: ncba

Tri-State Livestock News | Deja-vu for Checkoff Legislation: If at first you don’t succeed…

OCM Staff

Tri-State Livestock News By Traci Eatherton In late March, Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced new legislation, hoping to add what they call “much needed transparency and accountability” to checkoff programs. Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act of 2017 (OFF Act), along with a companion bill, the Voluntary Checkoff Act, is being praised by R-CALF. According to Bill Bullard, R-CALF CEO, the two bills were introduced too late last session for a full consideration in Read More …

USDA Claims Confidentiality for 12,000 Pages of Federal Checkoff Spending Records

OCM Staff

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 …

Meat+Poultry | Checkoff programs in legislative crosshairs

OCM Staff

Meat+Poultry BY ERICA SHAFFER WASHINGTON – Lawmakers in the US House and Senate introduced bi-partisan legislation intended to bring transparency and accountability to federal commodity marketing programs. Introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Corey Booker (D -NJ) the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act of 2017 (OFF Act) will: Clarify and fortify the prohibition on checkoff programs from contracting with organizations that lobby on agricultural policy; Establish program standards that prohibit anticompetitive behavior and engaging in Read More …

Agriculture.com | SF Special: A Constant Battle for Beef Checkoff Transparency

OCM Staff

Agriculture.com By Anna McConnell 3/21/2017  It all started when former Kansas City Star investigative reporter Mike McGraw overheard a conversation at the 2012 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Five years later, he’s unsure exactly what he heard and can’t locate his notes from the convention, but it was enough that the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) started balling its fists and marching toward the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board (CBB), also known as the Read More …

Organization for Competitive Markets v. Office of Inspector General (Checkoff Transparency Lawsuit)

OCM Staff

Issue In a six-year legal battle between family farmers and ranchers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), USDA refuses to release public audit and financial documents related to Beef Checkoff Program spending. By law, farmers and ranchers are mandated to pay into the government checkoff fund for research, promotion and development of markets for beef, but concerns arose after an audit found gross misuse of the program funds by the government’s primary contractor, a beef-industry lobbying group. Read More …

When were the words “United States beef” amended out of public law?

OCM Staff

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 …

OCM Still Focused on Competitive Markets

Fred Stokes

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 …

National Industrial Ag Trade Organizations Fail to Answer the Call for GIPSA Rule Debate

OCM Staff

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and National Chicken Council (NCC) refuse to answer the Organization for Competitive Markets’ (OCM) challenge to debate the benefits of the recently released GIPSA Farmer Fair Practices Rules. After all three industrialized agriculture trade organizations blasted the newly released rules, OCM sent a letter on December 27th, 2016 to NCBA, NPPC and NCC challenging them to a series of debates over the merits of the rules. All Read More …