USDA tells dairy industry not to worry about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) overregulation

It’s Climate Week, so this seems ironically appropriate.  Never mind global warming, ruminant greenhouse gas emissions, or food safety.

You have to love the double-speak rhetoric:

This action aligns research and promotion activities with the Department’s priorities and the original mission of the checkoffs. USDA remains committed to ensuring that every dollar collected from American producers serves American agriculture for the better.

“Serving American agriculture for the better” is a red flag.  It usually translates as serving the interests of agribusiness or the peculiar politics of the current USDA.

The USDA’s target here is its Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.  This, according to the announcement, was

established through the checkoff, has pursued extensive ESG initiatives, including greenhouse-gas and net-zero targets. USDA’s action ends checkoff support for those ESG-related projects…This action also directs the Agricultural Marketing Service to ensure no research and promotion funds in other commodity checkoffs advance ESG mandates…USDA is taking swift action to bar the Dairy Checkoff from spending farmer paid dollars on the radical ESG ideology [my emphasis].

I took a look at the Innovation Center website.  Its focus areas may explain why the USDA wants its funding stopped.  Radical ideology?  You decide.

• Animal care: Align the industry on best practices for animal well-being and care.
• Environmental Stewardship: Advance solutions that protect natural resources and nourish the planet for future generations.
• Food Safety: Drive adoption of world-class food safety practices while exploring next generation technologies that progress safety and traceability.
• Health & Well-being: Deliver dairy nutrition that meets emerging and personalized health while improving nutrition security in the U.S. and around the world.
• People & Community: Support efforts to alleviate hunger, promote community vitality, and empower the dairy workforce.

The Center is funded by the checkoff program.  With no checkoff funding, it will no longer exist.

Chalk this up as another tragic casualty of the Trump administration’s radical ideology.