Cattlemen’s Beef Board Cuts $1.15 Million From Budget
The Cattlemen’s Beef Board Operating Committee cut $1.15 million (3%) from its budget today, due to lower checkoff revenue brought on by lower cattle numbers and sales.
The Cattlemen’s Beef Board will invest about $38.5 million into programs of beef promotion, research, consumer information, industry information, foreign marketing and producer communications in Fiscal Year 2014. That’s contingent on a review by the full Beef Board and subsequent USDA approval.
Just one proposal submitted was cut completely, and that was a $100,000 request from the National Livestock Producers Association to help tell the beef story to consumers through participation on the established "America’s Heatland" program on public television.
The remainder of the cuts was achieved through reductions in budgets for the following programs:
- A proposal from the North American Meat Association for veal promotion (reduced from $756,250 to $631,250)
- Funding for the Northeast Beef Promotion Initiative brought by the Meat Import Council of America and the Pennsylvania Beef Council(reduced from $246,325 to $199,629)
- A "Moms, Millennials and More" communications program brought by the American National CattleWomen (reduced from $797,600 to $668,900)
- The foreign marketing program managed by the U.S. Meat Export Federation (reduced from $7.9 million to $7.6 million)
- A producer communications Authorization Request from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (reduced from $1.75 million to $1.5 million)
- NCBA’s proposal for a consumer information Authorization Request(reduced from $6.9 million to $6.7 million)
"I assure you, this was not an easy task, but I am so proud of how well members of this committee dug in and made the tough decisions," says Beef Board and Operating Committee Chairman Weldon Wynn, a cattleman from Arkansas.
"Our budget continues to tighten every year, but we have tightened our processes along with our belts to leverage every checkoff dollar to the greatest extent possible."