Milking dairy farmers for their ad dollars

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 18, 1997 | by John Berlau

Everyone from Bart Simpson to Bill Clinton to Bob Dole has popped up in the advertising pages of some of the country's poshest magazines sporting milk mustaches. But these and other milk ads have some dairymen foaming at the mouth because they are forced to subsidize them.

For several decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, has levied assessments on producers and processors of milk and other commodities to finance more than $1 billion in generic advertising by national and state promotion boards. The more memorable ad campaigns include: "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" and "Pork: The Other White Meat," as well as the famous dancing California raisins.

Though the ads may be cute, many farmers question their effectiveness and say the assessments deprive them of money they could spend on ads they believe would better promote their individual commodities. Under USDA regulation, dairy farmers must pay 15 cents for advertising and promotion on every 100 pounds of milk sold. John Kinsman, a Wisconsin dairy farmer with 36 cows, pays approximately $800 a year for the ads.

"If we had control of our own money, we could do a much better job of reaching markets, talking to consumers and letting them talk to us," says Kinsman, president of Family Farm Defenders, an agriculture-advocacy organization representing 2,000 farmers. He says that some dairy farmers especially object to the mustache ad featuring controversial basketball star Dennis Rodman. "Looking at the moral and ethical behavior of that man, they feel this is a terrible use of their money," he says.

It appears that the farmers have little recourse. A June Supreme Court decision found the payment requirement constitutional. The 5-4 decision, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, says the USDA's forced payments for the ads do not violate freespeech rights. Pointing out that there are procedures for referenda to end forced advertising for specific commodities, Stevens wrote that "the mere fact that one or more producers `do not wish to foster' generic advertising of their product is not a sufficient reason for overriding the judgment of the majority."

In the dissent, Justice David Souter argued that under a long line of precedents, "compelling cognizable speech officially is just as suspect as suppressing it." Needless to say, he probably won't be appearing in a milk ad anytime soon.