Pork Promotion Program

In May 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture received a petition with about 19,000 signatures requesting a vote on whether to continue the pork promotion program. Fifteen percent of those eligible are needed to require the Secretary of Agriculture to hold a referendum. GAO found that the Agricultural Marketing Service's (AMS) process to validate the pork petition was flawed in three areas: (1) AMS did not accurately estimate the population of pork producers; (2) AMS did not develop a reliable database of petitioner information as a basis for verifying petitioners' eligibility to sign a petition; and (3) AMS used a flawed survey methodology. The Secretary ordered a referendum because he concluded that it was impossible to ascertain the valid petitioners and efforts to revalidate the petition would not result in any greater certainty. He also believed that pork producers should vote on whether to continue the program because the industry had changed dramatically since the last vote in 1988. GAO recommends that AMS strengthen its validation process and seek reimbursement from program funds to pay all referendum expenses.

GAO noted that: (1) AMS' process to validate the pork petition was flawed in three key areas, according to GAO's analysis; (2) problems in any one of these areas would have raised questions about the integrity of the validation process; (3) AMS did not accurately estimate the population of pork producers; (4) it did not develop a reliable database of petitioner information as a basis for verifying petitioners' eligibility to sign a petition; (5) it employed a flawed survey methodology to verify the eligibility of the petitioners; (6) as a result, AMS could not determine with certainty whether 15 percent of eligible pork producers had signed the petition, which would require the USDA Secretary to hold a referendum on whether to continue the program; (7) although AMS has recognized that its validation process was flawed, it has not taken substantial actions to improve its process; (8) two primary factors led the Secretary of Agriculture to order a referendum; (9) he concluded that AMS' validation process was flawed; (10) consequently, the Secretary determined that it was impossible to ascertain the number of valid petitioners and that efforts to revalidate the petition would not result in any greater certainty; (11) second, the Secretary based his decision on his belief that check-off programs, including pork, should be subject to periodic referendums; (12) he strongly believed that pork producers should have the opportunity to vote on whether to continue the check-off program because the program is a mandatory assessment and the industry has changed dramatically since the last vote in 1988; (13) in GAO's view, the Secretary has the authority to order a pork referendum, but referendum expenses must be reimbursed from pork check-off funds, and appropriated funds may not be used to pay referendum expenses; (14) the Secretary interprets the Pork Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act of 1985 as granting him authority to conduct a referendum as a tool in deciding whether to terminate the pork check-off program; (15) GAO finds this interpretation to be a reasonable one; and (16) however, the Secretary may not pay for a referendum with appropriated funds because the act specifically states that AMS must be reimbursed for referendum expenses from pork check-off funds.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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