Legal challenges to the settlement agreement that allowed the pork checkoff to continue have ended.
The Campaign for Family Farms (CFF) asked a Michigan federal court to dismiss its challenges. CFF claimed Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's February 2001 decision to continue the program was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Dismissal of the claim ends the sole remaining legal challenge to the settlement agreement in federal court. Constitutional challenges to commodity checkoff programs continue.
National Pork Producers Council President Barb Determan states: “For more than two years, CFF has been declaring that enough valid petitions were submitted to USDA. This was their chance to prove it and they walked away. It should now be clear to all that the legal foundation for the attack on Secretary Veneman's decision to continue the pork checkoff program never existed.”