Dairy checkoff is a dairy product promotion scheme created to drive sales and demand for US dairy products and ingredients.
NMPF first worked with Congress to include a provision in the 2002 Farm Bill to expand the promotion checkoff to imports, but the expansion was blocked due to objections that the domestic checkoff wasn’t applied to farmers in all 50 states, only the continental 48. So, NMPF again worked with Congress as it wrote the 2008 Farm Bill to ensure that the checkoff was applied in every state. However, implementation of the measure has languished for the past three years in regulatory limbo, until now.
A final rule has been released by USDA that will extend the checkoff to all 50 states and Puerto Rico as of 1 April, and starting on 1 August, it assesses the equivalent of 7.5 cents per hundredweight on all dairy-based imports, including cheese and butter products, as well as dry ingredients such as casein and milk protein concentrates.
The money will be collected by the National Dairy Board to be used for nutrition research, consumer education, issues management, and other programmes that build demand for dairy consumption.
“It’s been a long time in coming, but we’ve finally achieved a degree of fairness in the area of dairy promotion between domestic milk production and imports,” said Jerry Kozak, president and CEO of NMPF. “Dairy importers, who benefit from the world’s largest dairy market, need to help pay to expand that market, the same way that our farmers do. We appreciate the efforts of agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to recognise how important it was to finally resolve this issue.”
Under the new import assessment, regional and state promotions, including those in Wisconsin and California, will continue to drive demand for dairy products, and the programme will, in all substantive respects, continue to run as it has.
The USDA has stated that the dairy import assessment will be administered so as to continue to permit state and regional promotions.
“While dairy imports enjoy a larger share of the US market compared to where things stood back in 1984, importers haven’t paid a single penny to help promote the market, the way America’s dairy farmers have,” said Kozak. “It’s time that inconsistency ends. Everyone who benefits from this market should pay part of the tab.”
Kozak also noted that at least 10 other farm commodities have promotion programmes that apply their checkoff to imports, saying that “dairy has been the exception to a common practice”.
Source: National Milk Producers Federation
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