The politicization of the national beef checkoff has provided lots of backroom intrigue. Some of the backroom details more closely resemble Nixon’s Watergate scandal than anything we’ve seen before in the cattle industry. However, the ethical breaches of having executive officers and staff clandestinely listening in on conference calls assumed to be confidential and the like represent behavior so far beyond the pale of acceptability that it will require significant changes to restore confidence in the program

byTroy Marshall 2, BEEF Contributing Editor