It’s blasphemous to say such a thing, I know, but the 39-year-old Beef Checkoff has outlived its usefulness. It was intended to promote beef, but it has done so poorly. As evidence of its ineffectiveness, please see the table below.

The Beef Checkoff program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. It assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle. According to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), it was designed to stimulate restaurants and grocery stores to sell more beef and encourage consumers to buy more beef. The checkoff funded the “Beef it’s what’s for dinner” advertising campaign, which was launched on May 18, 1992.

Cattle ranchers, however, are split on the checkoff’s use. One group, Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA), says the dollars are misapplied because they support government mandated speech, violating the free speech clause of the US constitution.

The other group, NCBA, has been a strong supporter of the checkoff program and has opposed any attempts to reform or end it.

From the table below, you can see beef was the protein that experienced both consumption and demand declines. It was the only one heavily advertised and promoted with checkoff dollars, unless you count “The other white meat” campaign by the Pork Board. By far, the king of consumption and demand growth was chicken — with no checkoff support, I might add!

But what should the beef industry do? My suggestion: Get rid of the beef checkoff. If the chicken folks can grow their consumption and demand by double digit amounts without a checkoff subsidy, why can’t the beef industry? Well, they can!

A look at consumption and demand statistics provides amplification:

When you spend as much money as was spent for the checkoff supported promotional campaigns ($42 million, according to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board) you should expect improvement, but none was experienced. Something must change!

Just how were the checkoff dollars allocated to be spent? In 2021, the funds were budgeted to be awarded in six categories (Source: Cattlemen’s Beef Board) as follows: Promotion ($9.8 million); Research ($8.9 million); Consumer Information ($7.3 million); Industry Information ($3.3 million); Foreign Marketing ($8.4 million); and Producer Communications ($1.7 million).

If the beef checkoff were eliminated, what would happen to those programs?

The big four beef companies have had a free promotional ride since the inception of the Beef Checkoff. Sure, they, like all others who traded cattle, dutifully paid their $1 per head checkoff fee, but these beef behemoths enjoyed checkoff-funded generic beef marketing and promotion effort.

By eliminating the checkoff, these big multi-billion dollar, largest in the world meat companies, would have to develop and fund their own branded marketing campaigns. Without the checkoff support, will consumption and demand drop precipitously? The big four beef behemoths operate their plants at 85% capacity. I would predict they will do everything they can to improve consumer takeaway with creative and unique marketing programs. They have too much invested in infrastructure to see further capacity erosion.

And, similarly, the small independent, non-commodity beef companies would also have to fund their own differentiated beef marketing efforts. But don’t they do that now? All that in-house marketing effort by both large and small beef companies would replace checkoff funded promotion and communication awards.

There would still be a need for industry-wide scientific research. E. coli O157:H7 has certainly proved that. However, there would be no “bucket” from which money could be grabbed for generic beef marketing or promotion. It would have to be funded by the companies whose profitability would depend on the effectiveness of their individual marketing programs.

Get rid of the beef checkoff? Yes! It is a time whose idea has come.

Get rid of the Beef Checkoff!

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