DOGE Looking At USDA

The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency recently announced on X that it wanted help examining the USDA, and those opposed to checkoff programs used the opportunity to voice their concerns.

Sunday’s post on X read:

“DOGE is seeking help from the public! Please DM this account with insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse relating to the US Department of Agriculture.”   As of Thursday afternoon, over 2,500 comments have been posted, while the announcement has been shared 4,300 times. 

One organization, Farm Action, called on DOGE to take on “USDA’s corrupt checkoff programs...We know of no other program more wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive."  In that post, Farm Action included a letter to Elon Musk and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, claiming farmers and ranchers are mandated to pay $1 billion annually into the commodity checkoff programs for research and promotion.

Much of the social media focus right now is on only a few of the 20+ USDA-authorized "research and promotion" programs, such as the beef, pork, and dairy checkoffs.  However, checkoff dollars are not taxpayer funds. 

Following this weekend's social media post, R-CALF released the following statement:

"We welcome the DOGE’s focus on the USDA and encourage listeners to provide their insights. At the end of this segment, I’ll provide the address you can use to send your direct message to DOGE.

"We’ve long argued that the beef checkoff program, which is a USDA program that requires cattle producers to pay $1 for every head of cattle they sell; and it collects about $70 million each year, much of that from producers who do not support the mandatory government program.

"While the beef checkoff program is supposed to fund education, promotion and research for beef, and not fund lobbying, evidence of abuse has surfaced. An independent audit report found that $216,000 of mandatory producer contributions had been misspent.

"Not long ago, we filed a lawsuit alleging the beef checkoff program was violating the constitutional rights of independent cattle producers by compelling them to subsidize private speech that they disagreed with. The magistrate judge in the case found that our allegations were likely true and that the beef checkoff program was operating inconsistent with the Constitution. In response, the USDA immediately entered contracts with the beef checkoff program’s state beef councils giving the USDA complete authority over every word and every message expressed under the mandatory beef checkoff program. The effect of these contracts was to convert what was private speech into government speech, and this ostensibly corrected the USDA’s decades-long constitutional violation.

"We have a second lawsuit pending that alleges the USDA entered these contracts unlawfully, which deprived the public any opportunity to better protect the rights of individual cattle producers. But while our lawsuit is making its way through the court, the USDA continues to employ staff to oversee and manage every word and every message conveyed by the $70 million mandatory program.

"This is wasteful. Why is the USDA managing the speech of a government-mandated program that forces every cattle producer to pay while allowing recipients of the mandatory funds to lobby against such important policy initiatives as mandatory country of origin labeling [MCOOL] that would benefit cattle producers and consumers alike by requiring all beef sold in grocery stores to be labeled as to its country of origin?

"So, the beef checkoff program is at the top of our list for USDA programs that are wasteful and rife with abuse.

"Second on the list is the USDA’s new mandate requiring cattle producers to affix costly electronic identification (EID) eartags on adult cattle shipped across state lines. The USDA claims the mandate will cost cattle producers tens of millions of dollars each year, and because the cost was so high, the USDA went to Congress and secured a $15 million dollar appropriation that USDA tried to use to purchase enough EID eartags to assuage the cost concerns that independent cattle producers had expressed. But the $15 million taxpayer appropriated funds wasn’t enough and producers are now being forced to pay for the most expensive form of animal identification on the market today.

"Why is Congress appropriating money to the USDA to purchase expensive EID eartags, including from foreign EID eartag manufacturers, when the much less expensive and U.S.-made animal identification devices already in use throughout the U.S. have proven effective in meeting the disease traceback needs of animal health officials? This too is an example of a wasteful and unnecessary USDA mandate.

"So these are the two top items we hope DOGE will focus on and eliminate in order to put an end to the waste, fraud and abuse occurring in the USDA’s beef checkoff program and EID eartag mandate.

"While these are the two programs on our offense list. There is a USDA initiative that we will need to defend because we know the concentrated meatpacker lobby is working hard to derail it.

"This initiative, of course, is the rulemaking effort the previous administration began to implement and enforce the over 100-year-old Packers and Stockyards Act.

"We view these rulemakings as critical if we are to restore competition to our industry’s fed cattle market and put an end to the abusive and harmful cattle procurement practices emanating from the highly concentrated fed cattle market. We want the Trump administration to follow through with the PSA rulemakings to balance the disparate bargaining power between widely disaggregated independent cattle producers and the highly concentrated, global meatpackers who buy their cattle.

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