10. Department of Agriculture · Minor · Needs Congress
Require votes at least every five years on checkoffs and marketing orders
Printed page 306 10. Department of Agriculture
“Promote legislation that would require regular votes. There should be regular voting for parties subject to checkoff programs and marketing orders. For example, the voting should occur at least every five years, to determine whether a marketing order or checkoff program should continue.”
What has happened
- Not started
No legislation requiring periodic continuance votes has advanced. The only checkoff bill in the 119th-Congress Corpus is H.R. 7851, the Checkoff Transparency Act, referred to the House Agriculture Committee on 2026-03-05, which addresses disclosure rather than mandatory five-year votes; under playbook §3b referral is `not-started`. The House-passed farm bill contains no continuance-referendum requirement. Cluster I (marketing orders and checkoff programs) in `docs/research/ch-10.md`, round 3 ticket 09 batch 09c, records the queries.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Two administrative movements run in opposite directions and are worth recording because the Quote also wants USDA bound by the result: AMS did hold a continuance referendum for the paper and paper-based packaging checkoff and honored the outcome by terminating the order (FR 2025-10053 and FR 2026-04570), which is the practice the Quote wants made routine; and the proposed South Texas onion order amendment (FR 2026-01351, 2026-01-23) would lower the threshold for continuance referenda in that order.
- Neither is legislation, and this item asks for legislation, so the Status is unmoved.
- Action
- other
- Object
- checkoff program and marketing order continuation votes
- ID
- 794