No More Subsidies to Huge Beef Farmers

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http://www.alternet.org/food/ranchers-and-activists-agree-its-time-stop-big-beef-subsidies-0



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Nearly 99 percent of all the beef tax dollars collected by the government, some $45 million a year, winds up in the hands of just one group, the NCBA, which relies overwhelmingly on this public money to support itself. Fewer and fewer actual “cattlemen” belong to the organization, while more and more complain that the NCBA presses for policies that undermine their own way of life and the public’s interest by favoring large packers and other corporate giants.

The ongoing fight over so-called country-of-origin labeling for meat provides a case in point. Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef Packing, which together control 85 percent of the meat-packing business, strongly oppose having to tell you where the different parts of your hot dog or frozen hamburger patty come from. As a practical matter, they say, it could well be that some parts come from imports that have been broken down and blended with fat from U.S.-fed cattle, making it difficult and expensive to determine which parts come from where.

On the other side of the question are independent American ranchers and most of the American public. In May, a poll by the Consumer Federation of America showed that 87 percent of adult Americans favor mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef, while some 90 percent want food sellers to spell out whether the beef was processed domestically. America’s small-scale ranchers, especially those competing to sell beef raised in humane and environmentally sustainable conditions, naturally want such consumers to be able to tell where their beef comes from.

Nonetheless, the NCBA has joined with other trade groups representing meat-packers, including foreign groups, in suing to block the USDA’s full implementation of country-of-origin labeling. Such a regulation, they argue, would amount to “unduly compelled speech” in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. So far, a federal judge has rejected their argument, and the NCBA and its allies are appealing.