Booker, Lee Urge USDA for Greater Transparency in Dairy Programs

Letter

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

We write to express deep concern regarding the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA)
ongoing failure to publish annual reports to Congress on the National Dairy Promotion and
Research Program and the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program for the years 2020,
2021, and 2022.1

In 1983, Congress enacted the Dairy Production Stabilization Act, which authorized the dairy
checkoff program. Under this legislation, USDA is required to report annually to Congress
"describing activities conducted, accounting for the receipt and disbursement of all funds, and
including an independent analysis of the effectiveness of the program."2

Yet USDA has not submitted such reports since 2019, as noted by the National Dairy Producers
Organization and Farm Action in a letter3 sent earlier this summer. We are highly troubled that
dairy farmers have been denied access to federally mandated reports detailing the efficacy of
programs they must fund. USDA is obligated to provide this information to ensure transparency
in how dairy producer's dollars are spent; by neglecting to fulfill this obligation, USDA risks
further eroding farmer's confidence in important agriculture programs.

Furthermore, this is not the first time that USDA under your leadership has failed to submit these
reports to Congress. In your first term as Secretary, they went unpublished for five years. Only in
2017, when Secretary Sonny Perdue responded to pressure from farm groups and the media,
were dairy farmers finally able to see how their mandatory fees were spent from 2012-2016.

The last report received by Congress was in 2019. Since that time, America's dairy farmers have
paid nearly $1 billion in mandatory checkoff fees to the National Dairy Promotion and Research

1 https://www.ams.usda.gov/reports/report-congress-dairy-fluid-milk-promotion-research-programs
2 7 U.S.C.S § 4514
3 https://farmaction.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dairy-Checkoff-Letter-to-USDA.pdf

Program. At the same time, we have witnessed the loss of more than 6,000 dairy operations
across our rural communities. The time is now for your Department to disclose how these dollars
were spent and evaluate the effectiveness of those efforts.

We request the immediate release of these outstanding reports. If the Department has failed to
complete these reports, we request written justification by September 29, 2023.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Source