By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER

Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three farm groups have called for the disqualification of the Ohio Beef Council (OBC) from the beef checkoff program. The OBC has called the charges “unfounded allegations.”

The Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM), Ohio Farmers Union (OFU) and Buckeye Quality Beef Assoc. accused the OBC of illegally using farmers’ tax dollars to influence policy and elections. In a letter sent to officials, they called on the federal agencies that qualified the OBC to disqualify it as the Qualified State Beef Council.

“These unfounded allegations attacking the beef checkoff have been ongoing for a while and are part of a larger agenda for OCM,” said Elizabeth Harsh, OBC executive director, by email to Farm World. “Here is the original statement we made in February:

“The OBC is proud not only of its efforts to help enhance beef demand for the benefit of beef producers, but of the comprehensive and robust firewalls in place to assure that checkoff funds are used lawfully and as intended. The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) has provided trusted and vigilant oversight to that end.”

It added that information on spending can be found at www.ohiobeef.org

The OBC operates in conjunction with and on behalf of a private membership-based trade and lobbying entity, the Ohio Cattlemen’s Assoc., countered Joe Maxwell, executive director of OCM. The organizations share headquarters, email domain service and phone numbers. Both organizations have the same staff members.

“They engage in political activity,” Maxwell said. “We have an email that was sent from the OBC soliciting political funds on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio. Federal and state law prohibit that activity and, based on our report of the issue in February, this has been an ongoing issue for at least for a decade.

“If those in power at the state and national level have failed to act, and the OBC continues to have illegal activity, they need to be disqualified. They are like a spoiled child; they think if they have gotten away with it in the past, they should keep getting away with it in the future.”

These farm groups have also been advocating for checkoff policy reform at the federal level in the form of two bipartisan pieces of legislation under consideration for the 2018 farm bill.

“The checkoffs have done a lot of good things over the course of their many decades of operation, but the structure of the marketplace has changed dramatically,” said Joe Logan, OFU president. “Unfortunately, they have changed in some ways that have removed the American producer from the center of gravity toward the use of an important operation.”

As markets have become globalized, their interests have continued to rest and interact with the checkoff organizations, he said. “We have grave concerns that the checkoffs are operating in the interests of the international market forces rather than domestic producers.”

That is demonstrated by initiatives such as country-of-origin labeling and the Farmer Fair Practices Act, which producers and consumers like, Logan said. Surprisingly, he said, the checkoff organizations have vigorously opposed these sorts of initiatives.

However, OBC said in an email response that the 15 members of the OBC Operating Committee, appointed by the director of ODA, take their responsibility for investing producer funds to enhance beef demand very seriously, according to Jamie Graham, OBC chair and a cattleman from Patriot.

“At the same time, we are discouraged the OCM, and its friends at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) continue to use the producers’ beef checkoff program as a cudgel against the very producers who benefit from it. Former HSUS employee Joe Maxwell of OCM may not recognize actions of his organization as counterproductive to the interests of Ohio cattle producers, but they are,” Graham stated.

Joining forces with a group that wants to decrease beef consumption is not in the best interests of state beef producers, he added.

Maggie Henton, communications manager for the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB), which provides oversight of beef councils on an ongoing basis, issued this statement: “Based on our oversight of the Ohio Beef Council, CBB finds no basis in fact to believe that any of OCM’s allegations are credible.”