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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Dairy farmers ask, 'Got free speech?'
  • Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 06:19:06 -0700

Dairy farmers ask, 'Got free speech?'

Sunday, February 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Dairy farmers ask, 'Got free speech?'


On Jan. 12 in Philadelphia, Institute for Justice
attorney Steve Simpson argued the case of dairy
farmers Joseph and Brenda Cochran of Westfield, Pa. --
about a mile from the New York state line -- before
the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Cochrans are suing the federal government for
requiring them to participate in the dairy promotion
program. You've seen those ubiquitous "Got milk?" ads
on TV and billboards? Well, the Cochrans are asking,
"Got free speech?"

The Cochrans say they're charged about $4,000 per year
-- which they can ill afford because they're already
losing money -- for generic advertisements that
actually obscure the distinctions between their
traditional farming methods and those of large-scale
dairy producers.

The case could have major implications for the similar
programs promoting a wide variety of agricultural
products including the, "Ahh, the power of cheese,"
"Beef, it's what's for dinner," and "Pork, the other
white meat" campaigns, IJ attorneys say.

(In fact, Congress has become so enamored of this form
of central agricultural planning that in the past two
decades Washington has created federally supervised
"promotional programs" for products as wide-ranging as
beef, pork, honey, potatoes, watermelons, mangos, kiwi
fruit, limes, fresh cut flowers, peanuts, popcorn,
pecans, soybeans, avocados and wool ... to name just a
few.)

Dairy farming has been in Joe Cochran's family for
three generations, and the couple has tried to move
their operation back to the way it was done in the old
days.

As "traditional" dairy farmers, the Cochrans allow
their cows more room to graze and move around, and
they don't use bovine growth hormone. They herd about
150 Holstein (and some Jersey and Normandie cross)
cows on roughly 900 acres of land, 200 of which they
own -- grazing the herd outdoors from spring through
fall, feeding them corn silage in the winter.

In the Cochrans' view, these traditional methods
result in healthier cows, easier calvings, lower
veterinary bills (with less use of antibiotics), a
cleaner environment and a superior product.

The Cochrans thus have every reason to want to
distinguish their product from that of larger-scale
producers. But the Dairy Act compels them to do just
the opposite. It requires them to fund generic ads
whose message is that all milk is the same, regardless
of who produces it or how.

Under the Dairy Program, all dairy farmers are charged
for the ads at a rate of 15 cents per "hundredweight"
(100 lbs.) of milk they sell.

The Cochrans don't even have the option of not sending
in a check, they explained when I called them a couple
weeks ago. Rather, the payments they receive from
their milk processor simply have their "Got Milk?"
advertising contributions already deducted -- kind of
like payroll withholdings.

The program was voluntary until the mid-1980s, when it
suddenly became mandatory, Brenda Cochran explains.

"When we started milking our cows in 1975 we didn't
know our First Amendment rights were going to be taken
away. ... We're not allowed as producers to vote on
this. The co-ops carry all the weight through their
bloc votes -- we're perfectly willing to see this put
to a vote of all individual farmers. ... It's wrong
for the federal government to force this scheme on
people who don't want to participate."

Institute attorney Simpson points out, "The U.S.
Supreme Court long ago held that the First Amendment
does not allow government to compel individuals to
speak, just as it does not allow government to prevent
them from speaking. Speech wouldn't be free if
government could require people to convey officially
sanctioned messages. The same principle applies to
compelling people to pay for speech with which they
disagree."

In fact, Thomas Jefferson once warned that, "To compel
a man to furnish contributions of money for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and
abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

Weirdly enough, the Cochrans initially lost in a lower
court based on legal logic that says the government
can regulate their freedom of speech, since the
government already regulates them so heavily in other
areas. (In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a
federal law that required producers of California
peaches and nectarines to subsidize a collective
advertising program ... because they operate in a
heavily regulated industry. But in 2001, the court
struck down a program that required producers of
mushrooms to do the same ... because they are not as
heavily regulated.)

"Courts are telling agricultural producers that as
long as the government controls their prices,
production, terms of sale and so on, it may as well
control their free speech, too," Simpson says. "But
two wrongs don't make a right; restricting one kind of
freedom -- economic liberty -- isn't license to
destroy another -- free speech."

If the federal government is in trouble because its
ill-advised, 55-year-old dairy price support program
-- which stores tons of dried milk in caves in Kansas
while American cheesemakers continue to import
casseine and milk protein concentrate from Australia,
New Zealand and Europe -- has become a hopeless snarl,
the answer is not to require dairy farmers to
subsidize a collective advertising program they don't
want ... but to end the price support program
entirely, and let competition and the free market
determine how much milk we buy, and what price it
sells for.



Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of
the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in
the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His
Web site is www.privacyalert.us.





  • [Livingontheland] Dairy farmers ask, 'Got free speech?', Tradingpost, 02/18/2004

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