Monday July 22, 2002
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Senate Committee on Agriculture hearing
room
(328 Russell Senate Office
Building)
Moderator:
Mr. Jerry Hagstrom, Agriculture Contributing Editor,
National Journal
Confirmed Panelists:
Dr. Enrique Figueroa, former Deputy Secretary for
Marketing and Regulatory Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Mr. Eric Schippers, Executive Director, Center for
Individual Freedom; accompanied by Mr. Benjamin Yale, Esq., and Mr. Erik S.
Jaffe, Esq.
Ms. Laura Phelps, President, American Mushroom
Institute.
Mr. G. Chandler Keys, III, Vice President for Public
Policy, The National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
Format:
Each panelist will speak for approximately
five minutes. After all the panelists have spoken, the audience will have
the opportunity to ask questions.
Topic:
Several mandatory agriculture promotion programs,
including dairy, beef, pork, watermelons, and honey, have recently become
entangled in numerous controversies and lawsuits. In June 2001, the U.S. Supreme
Court declared the mushroom promotion program an unconstitutional violation of
the First Amendment rights of mushroom producers. Since then, a federal district
court has ruled the beef promotion program unconstitutional and has issued an
injunction forbidding the collection of assessments after July 15, 2002. While
the scope of the regulatory and marketing programs governing agricultural
commodities appears to be an important factor, conflicting opinions by the U.S.
Supreme Court have created some ambiguities regarding the legitimacy of
mandatory checkoff programs. It is important to objectively evaluate both the
merits and underlying causes of these challenges as well as the achievements of
these self-help programs. To that end, we believe a roundtable discussion by
promotion program experts with different perspectives would be a tremendous help
to lawmakers seeking to address the needs of agricultural producers subject to
checkoff programs.
