CONTENTS

Glickman vs. Wileman - On the Doorstep of
The Supreme Court

USDA's Viewpoint

Editor's Notes

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 2002 Next Meeting Date xx-yy, 2002 Albuquerque, New Mexico Allocation Issues in Check-off Programs

Editor's Notes

by John E. Lenz

This issue of the NICPRE Quarterly is a rather substantial departure from previous issues in that we have neither an evaluation article nor a Manager's Viewpoint. We have also departed from our usual format by adding two pages to this issue to avoid splitting an important article over two issues.

In our lead article, Richard Rossier and Wayne Watkinson, of McLeod, Watkinson & Miller, summarize the arguments and amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court in the Wileman case. This case is, as Rossier and Watkinson state, a "big deal" for commodity promotion programs; the Court's decision, whichever way it comes down, will hold long-lasting implications for mandatory funding of generic commodity promotion.

In lieu of a Manager's Viewpoint, this issue contains a USDA Viewpoint written by Dr. Kenneth C. Clayton, Deputy Administrator of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. In his article, Dr. Clayton discusses the various oversight functions that USDA is responsible for in relation to Federally authorized commodity promotion programs and highlights some new promotion-related features contained in the 1996 Farm Bill.

In his Director's Corner, Harry Kaiser discusses three major recommendations that the NICPRE Advisory and Steering Committees made during their recent meeting in Ithaca. These recommendations concern evaluation of the impacts of branded versus generic advertising, NICPRE outreach efforts, and evaluation of non-advertising program efforts.