“A Very Productive Joint Meeting”

After meeting with representatives of the Federation of State Beef Council’s executive committee on Thursday morning, the Beef Board Executive Committee compiled a list of Federation concerns about the CBB committee’s Roles & Responsibilities recommendations.

A resolution that gained support of both committees states that the two “had a very productive joint meeting and conversation and look forward to working together moving forward.”

The meeting was closed to staff, but open to producer members of both committees, as well as any other producers in attendance at the week’s meetings — including CBB and Federation members of the Beef Promotion Operating Committee (see posts below).

(For background and reference purposes, the Roles & Responsibilities recommendations are available HERE; and CBB’s response to the Federation’s written comments about those is available HERE.)

In its own meeting later in the afternoon on Thursday, the CBB Executive Committee voted unanimously in favor of recording the Federation concerns about the Roles & Responsibilities documents, while its members were in the room to substantiate each of them.  Here are some of the suggestions made to the CBB Executive Committee for consideration:

• Suggestion that checkoff committees remain joint via equal numbers of members from Federation and Beef Board, including committee chair and vice chair positions. This would include the Joint Evaluation Committee.
• Request that the recommendations be clarified overall so that they cannot be misinterpreted as some “empire-building” effort by one group — rather simply as a listing of the Beef Board’s current responsibilities, in many cases. That includes clarifying that the CBB is not attempting to require state beef councils to send more than half of each checkoff dollar collected to the Beef Board, but rather noting that they CAN — as is currently noted in the Act & Order.
• Suggestions that the legal role of the CBB in planning be clarified.
• A recommendation that the Joint Committee and Joint Operating Committee agreements be reinstated/retained.

Now, the Executive Committee will wait until all other comments about the Roles & Responsibilities document are received from beef industry organizations that have been given a July 9 deadline for comments.

The CBB Executive Committee then will have a conference call on July 11 to determine if any of the comments have influenced them to make any changes to their recommendations before a full Beef Board discussion of them at the Board’s Aug. 4 meeting in Orlando.

$42 Million CBB Budget Recommended for FY2012

The Operating Committee accepted the recommendation from the Joint Budget Committee for a $42 million Beef Board budget for national checkoff programs in Fiscal Year 2012, which begins Oct. 1, 2011.

There was some discussion about whether the “producer communications” program area belonged under administrative costs or program costs for the checkoff, but upon an explanation and discussion about the history of development of the original Beef Act and Order, the committee maintained producer communications as a program expense, at a recommended level of $1.8 million of the total CBB budget in FY2012. USDA Ag Marketing Services rep Craig Shackelford pointed out that all of the 18 commodity checkoff programs running in this country today categorize producer communications as a program budget component, as well.

As recommended and based on budget projections developed through a number of data sources, including CBB, Cattle-Fax, and USDA, the budget recommendation includes the following:

• $20.76 million for promotion
• $6.79 million for research
• $5.11 million for consumer information
• $3.63 million for industry information
• $8.26 million for foreign marketing
• $1.8 million for producer communications

Non-program budgets for the coming year are recommended at $225,000 for evaluation; $180,000 for program development; $250,000 for USDA oversight; and $2 million for administration, which includes not only all salaries and benefits, but office materials and rent, and the cost of all CBB meetings and associated travel for Board members.

The recommended budget will be presented to the full Beef Board for a vote during its meeting at the summer Cattle Industry Conference in Orlando the first week of August, and from there to USDA.

Operating Committee Meeting Under Way

The Beef Promotion Operating Meeting in Denver is just getting under way, beginning wtih a financial report from CBB Secretary/Treasurer Weldon Wynn and an Joint Evaluation Committee update from CBB Member Ted Greidanus of California, who chairs that committee.

Also on the agenda for the Operating Committee today, before a standing-room-only gallery, is discussion of budget recommendations for Fiscal 2012, as presented by the Joint Budget Committee, and formulation of an Operating Committee recommendation to send to the full Beef Board at the summer conference in Orlando in August.

See the post below for a complete agenda of today’s meeting, as well as information about tomorrow’s meeting of the CBB Executive Committee, and for minutes of past meetings of these committees, click on “committees” on the top left of this page and select a committee.

For a complete listing of committee members, visit Checkoff Committees on MyBeefCheckoff.com.

Operating, Exec Committees Meet June 15-16

The Beef Promotion Operating Committee and the Beef Board Executive Committee are scheduled to meet in Denver this week, with recommendations for a Fiscal Year 2012 Beef Board budget among the agenda items.

Current members of the two committees are listed at Committees on MyBeefCheckoff.com, under each committee title and description.

The Operating Committee will begin its meeting at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 15, at the Embassy Suites Denver International Airport Hotel. As a reminder, the Operating Committee is made of up 10 members of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and 10 members of the Federation of State Beef Councils. It is chaired by Beef Board Chairman Tom Jones.

For an agenda of the Operating Committee meeting, visit OC Agenda 061511.

The CBB Executive Committee is slated to begin at 8 a.m. on Thursday, June 16, at the same hotel in Denver. The Executive Committee is made of up 11 members of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and acts on behalf of the Board between meetings of the full Board.

This week, the CBB Executive Committee will start off by meeting with the members of the Executive Committee of the Federation of State Beef Councils to discuss common issues, including the CBB Executive Committee’s roles and responsibilities recommendations. Per agreement between leadership of the two committees, that portion of the meeting will involve only the producers who sit on those two committees – no staff or other participants.  

The CBB committee also will review the budget recommendation from the Operating Committee, as well as reviewing financial reports, state beef council marketing plans, and state and national checkoff requests for partnerships involving brand and/or trade-name references.

For an agenda of the Executive Committee meeting, visit EC Agenda 061611.