Pork Referendum Costs Will Be Paid by USDA

October 31, 2000

Legislation Congress passed for grain standards also also contains language ensuring that the Secretary of Agriculture will keep his commitment to pay all costs associated with the recent pork checkoff referendum. The bill, the Grain Standards and Warehouse Improvement Act (H.R. 4788), passed both the House and Senate unanimously. The president has expressed reservations with other sections of the bill, but has not threatened a veto.

Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman earlier had said that USDA would pay all costs, given the fact that it could not be determined whether the requisite number of valid petitions had been submitted. A Sept. 25 GAO report declared that USDA did not have the legal authority to pay for the referendum out of appropriated funds. That same report also found that USDA underestimated the number of pork producers and consequently, the number of valid signatures necessary to trigger a referendum.

H.R. 4788 directs the Secretary to use "funds of the Commodity Credit Corporation to pay for all expenses associated with the pork checkoff referendum ordered by the Secretary on Feb. 25, 2000."

Estimates of the total cost of the referendum keep going up. Agricultural Marketing Administrator Kathleen Merrigan, in congressional testimony in March, put the cost of the referendum at $129,000. In September, GAO estimated the cost at $529,000. An AMS representative told the Pork Board recently that the cost could be anywhere between $550,000 and $800,000, not counting FSA employee costs.