A $60 million pork kickback?
一份6千万美金的猪肉回扣？
Unhappy small farmers detect a racket in a pork branding deal—and the USDA signed off on it.
不幸的小农户们从一桩猪肉品牌服务交易中发现了诈骗行为，并且美国农业部还在这上面签了字。
Pork hasn’t been “the other white meat” for years—after a 24-year run as the centerpiece of billboards and the butt of jokes, the slogan was retired in 2011 and replaced with “Pork: Be Inspired,” a logo you might have seen on the apron of Ted Cruz as he grilled pork chops at the Iowa State fair last week.
猪肉已经很多年没有被称作“另一种白肉”【校注：1986年，鉴于当时消费者普遍接受了红肉不利健康的观念，全国猪肉委员会发起了一场旨在让消费者相信“猪肉是另一种白肉”的宣传活动】了——在当了24年的广告牌要点以及笑柄之后，这条广告语在2011年退休，取而代之的则是一条新标语：“猪肉，振奋人心”。你可能看过，Ted Cruz【校注：2016年美国共和党总统提名竞争者之一】上周在爱荷华州博览会上烤猪排时穿的围裙上就有这条标语。
But the National Pork Board, a government-sponsored entity funded by a tax on hog farmers, still writes a check for $3 million every year to license the unused slogan—a bewildering payout that only makes sense, critics say, when you realize the money goes straight to an industrial pork lobby that has long been closely tied to the board. Farmers who pay for the board are crying foul, saying the deal amounts to a scheme to let the board skirt anti-lobbying laws and promote an agenda directly against their interests.
但是，“全国猪肉委员会”，这个资金来源于生猪养殖户所缴税收的政府资助实体，为了让这条已不再使用的广告语获得许可，每年仍会开出300万美元的支票。批评者说，这笔支出乍看的确令人困惑，不过当你意识到这些钱其实直接交给了一个和该委员会联系甚密的猪肉工业游说团体时，一切就都说得通了。给委员会付款的农户骂声一片，他们说这笔交易相当于一个阴谋，想要让委员会绕过反游说法，发起一项直接损害他们利益的议程。
“It’s a shell game,” said Hugh Espey, the executive director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, who has been fighting for years to roll back the mandatory payments to the Pork Board.
“这是个骗局，”Hugh Espey说道，他是“爱荷华州社区改善公民组织”的执行主任，多年来一直在努力争取减少缴纳给猪肉委员会的强制性付款。
Saying the U.S. Department of Agriculture should have recognized the deal as corrupt and blocked it, Espey and a group of small hog farmers, along with the Humane Society of the United States, sued the federal government to undo the deal and recoup the millions of dollars already paid for the defunct “other white meat” slogan. Earlier this month a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allowed the suit to proceed.
由于认为美国农业部应该认定这笔交易为腐败行为并加以阻止，Espey和一群小型生猪养殖户连同“美国人道协会”一起状告联邦政府，要求撤销这笔交易，并且追回已经花在废弃广告语“另一种白肉”上的数百万美元。本月早些时候，哥伦比亚特区巡回上诉法院受理了这一上诉。
The deal sends $60 million over 20 years from the nonpartisan Pork Board to the slogan’s legal owner, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), a lobby with which it once shared an office. Small farmers have long been unhappy about the close relationship between the two groups, and see the rich payments for a defunct slogan as an egregious example of the government taking their money and then letting it be siphoned off to an industry group.
20多年间，上述交易将6000万美元从无党派的“全国猪肉委员会”转移到广告语法定所有人“全国猪肉生产者理事会”（NPPC）这一游说团体手上，而双方曾经共用同一个办公室。小型农户早已对这两个组织的过从甚密心存不满，并且他们认为政府收了他们的钱之后任由其被转移到产业集团手中，而用在这条废弃广告语上的巨额花费就是一个非常恶劣的例子。
Many critics also see the deal as symptomatic of a far broader problem with the “checkoff” programs that have become common across the agricultural world, in which the government requires farmers to make regular payments to promotional boards. Checkoffs exist for dairy farmers, mushroom producers, and even popcorn processors. Critics say they violate economic freedom and distort the market; big corporate farmers, they allege, easily find ways to influence the boards and siphon the money off to push their own causes.
许多批评家还认为，这笔交易也反映了一个更为深远的问题，也就是农业界已经司空见惯的“缴款”方案。通过这一程序，政府要求农户们定期为广告牌支付费用。缴款方案涉及奶农，食用菌生产者，甚至还有爆米花生产者。批评者称这些做法违反了经济自由并扭曲了市场；他们还指控，大型农业公司很容易就能找到方法来影响各委员会，并抽取资金以用于他们自己的事业。
“In one sense, it’s a classic case of the larger producers are the more powerful political forces within these organizations,” said Dan Glickman, the Agriculture Secretary at the end of the Clinton administration who largely supports checkoff programs.
“从某种意义上说，这是一个反映大型生产商在这些组织内享有更强大政治力量的典型案例，”Dan Glickman说道，他是克林顿政府后期的农业部长，基本上支持缴款制度。
For the unhappy hog farmers, the current problem started with the 1985 Pork Law, when Congress set up the National Pork Board and required all farmers to contribute. Today, hog farmers must hand over 40 cents out of every $100 in revenue from pork sales. The board uses the money, totaling nearly $100 million a year, to conduct research and promote the pork industry, but is not allowed to lobby.
对于那些不爽的生猪养殖户来说，目前的问题开始于1985年《猪肉法案》，当时国会设立了全国猪肉委员会，并要求所有农民作出缴纳。今天，生猪养殖户必须从每100美元的猪肉销售收入中交出40美分。委员会用这笔每年总额将近1亿美元的款项开展调查研究，促进猪肉产业发展，但不允许进行游说。
The main pork lobby is the National Pork Producers Council, which donated nearly a half million dollars to candidates in the 2014 midterms – mainly, its critics say, to press the interests of big corporate hog farms. Legally, it isn’t supposed to use Pork Board money for its lobbying activities.
主要的猪肉游说团体是全国猪肉生产者理事会，在2014年的中期选举中曾捐赠将近50万美元－－根据批评者的说法，这主要是为了推进大型生猪养殖公司的利益。从法律上讲，它不应该将猪肉委员会的资金用于其游说活动。
But critics say the two groups have never been as separate as the law calls for, and now are essentially colluding through a deal that lets the Pork Board funnel money to the NPCC by assigning an absurdly inflated value to the “other white meat” slogan; the money then goes to promote the NPPC’s lobbying agenda.
但是批评者说这两个组织从未像法律规定那样保持分离，而且现在通过这笔为广告语“另一种白肉”设置荒谬天价的交易，猪肉委员会得以向NPPC输送资金，这也使得它们实质上是在串通。NPPC在获取了这笔资金之后便将之用于推动其游说议程。
The Pork Board referred comments about the case to the USDA. A spokesperson for the department said in an email that “the assessments and expenditures by the National Pork Board were proper,” but declined to discuss the case further.
猪肉委员会将关于这桩案件的意见提交给了美国农业部。该部一位发言人在一封电子邮件中表示“由全国猪肉委员会做出的评估和支出是妥当的，”但是他拒绝进一步讨论案情。
The NPPC and NPB have always been very close, so close that a 1999 Inspector General report said that the government had to put more space between the two entities to limit the pork lobby’s influence at the board.
NPPC和NPB一直走的很近，以至于1999年的一份监察长报告称，政府需要在这两个实体之间设置更多的隔离，以限制猪肉游说团体对该委员会的影响。
“It’s a little bit like these super PACs with campaigns. Same people doing the same thing,” Glickman said about problems with the pork checkoff in the late 1990s. “That wasn’t what Congress intended.”
“这有一点像竞选中的那些超级政治行动委员会。同样的人做同样的事情，”Glickman谈起1990年代末期的猪肉缴款问题是这么说的。“那并不是美国国会原来设想的。”
Espey and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement have long fought the pork checkoff program, and once came close to eliminating it altogether. In 2000, opponents gathered enough signatures among hog farmers to force a referendum on the checkoff. More than 30,000 hog farmers voted; by 5 percentage points, they chose to kill the program.
Espey和爱荷华州社区改善公民组织已经与猪肉缴款方案持续作战很久了，并且曾经一度接近将其彻底消灭。2000年，反对者们从生猪养殖户中收集到了足够的签名，推动发起了一场针对缴款的公投。超过30000名养猪农户参加了投票；以领先5%的优势，他们选择终止这个方案。
Glickman began dismantling it, but the NPPC challenged the referendum in court, and when the Bush administration took office that January, incoming USDA secretary Ann Veneman reversed Glickman’s decision. Instead, she crafted a “separation agreement” that overturned the referendum result but required the NPPC and NPB to adjust their operations so they were independent.
Glickman开始着手撤销这个方案，但是NPPC在法庭上质疑了这次公投，而且在那年一月布什政府上台之后，新任农业部长Ann Veneman就推翻了Glickman的决定。相反，她起草了一份“分离协议”，推翻了之前的公投结果，但要求NPPC和NPB必须调整他们的运营方式以保持相互独立。
“It was window dressing. It was bullshit,” Espey said. “Essentially, she was throwing out our vote.”
“这根本就是敷衍了事，胡说八道，”Espey说道。“实际上，她完全抛弃了我们的投票。”
After the agreement, the NPB and NPPC made some changes. The NPPC could no longer be the NPB’s general contractor, meaning the Board had “to conduct its own programming and coordinate its own activities,” according to the NPB’s own video history. The two groups no longer shared an office and a number of staffers switched from the pork lobby to the board. To the NPB and NPPC, Espey and Co. were simply scapegoating the organizations for their own failures.
在达成协议之后，NPB和NPPC做出了一些改变。根据NPB自己的历史记录片，NPPC不再是NPB的总承包商，这意味着委员会必须“自行进行规划，自行协调其活动”。两个组织不再共用办公室，一部分员工也从猪肉游说团体转到了委员会工作。对于NPB和NPPC来说，Espey及其公司仅仅是在为他们自己的失败寻找替罪羊。
The NPPC, which declined comment for this piece, has always owned the “other white meat” slogan, and as part of the separation agreement, it licensed the slogan to the board for around $1 a year. In 2004, the NPB agreed to increase the annual licensing fee to $818,000 a year. Despite the success of “the other white meat” trademark, an agricultural economist recommended that the board not pay more than $375,000 a year to license the slogan, according to the complaint.
拒绝为本文提供评论的NPPC一直拥有“另一种白肉”这条广告语，根据“分离协议”，它将这条广告语以每年一美元的价格授权给了委员会。到了2004年，NPB同意将每年的授权费用提高到818000美元。控告显示，尽管“另一种白肉”这个标志十分成功，某农业经济学家仍然建议，委员会每年最多只能为这条广告语的授权支付375000美元。
In 2006, the NPB signed a deal to buy the slogan for $3 million a year for 20 years—a four-fold jump in price, even though almost no other group would conceivably have any interest in the slogan.
2006年，NPB签署了一项协议，在几乎没有任何其他组织有可能对这条广告语有任何兴趣的情况下，以每年300万美元——四倍跳价——购买了这条广告语的20年使用授权。
“Are the artichoke producers competing for the slogan “Pork: The Other White Meat”? No, I don’t think so.” says Parke Wilde, an associate professor of food science and policy at Tufts University who has written extensively about the $60 million deal and considers it corrupt.
“是洋蓟生产商在争夺‘猪肉：另一种白肉’这条广告语吗？不，我不这么认为。”Parke Wilde说道。他是塔夫茨大学的食品科学与政策副教授。关于这一6千万美金的交易，他写了大量文章，并且认为这就是腐败。
According to the plaintiffs, the $60 million valuation came from calculating the cost of creating a new tagline, not on the slogan’s market value. But several specialists contacted for this story suggested that with no other reasonable potential buyers, it’s a mistake to pay the full value.
据原告，这6千万美元的估值，是根据创建一个新的品牌口号的成本来计算的，而不是根据这条广告语的市场价值。但在本文写作过程中联系到的一些专家看来，在没有其他合理的潜在买家的情况下，支付全价是一个错误。
“If you’re the single buyer out there, you’d expect a deep discount and that deep discount would be at least 25 percent, perhaps 50 percent,” said Weston Anson, the chairman of CONSOR Intellectual Asset Management, a firm that specializes in valuing intellectual property.
“如果你是市场上的唯一买家，你会期望一个非常高的折扣，而这个折扣至少是25%，或许有50%，”Weston Anson说道，他是CONSOR知识资产管理公司的董事长，这是一家专注知识产权定价的公司。
Even stranger, to observers, is that when the Pork Board retired the slogan five years later, it continued paying the $3 million to the pork lobby—despite having the right to cancel the deal with a year’s notice.
对于观察者来说更奇怪的是，在猪肉委员会将这条广告语停用了将近5年之后，尽管它拥有在提前一年告知的前提下取消这笔交易的权利，它依旧继续支付给了猪肉游说团体3百万美元。
“If they have that out, they should be taking it,” Anson said.
“如果他们有抽身的机会，他们应该会把握住的，”Anson说。
The NPB says that the “other white meat” slogan still has value as a “heritage brand,” though Anson disagreed: “As best as we can determine, they are not using this brand at all. If that’s true, then this is not a heritage brand. Then, it’s a fallow brand—one that’s been retired—and would be difficult to value given that it has no income, no market presence and only residual awareness.”
NPB表示“另一种白肉”这条广告语依旧具有作为“传承品牌”的价值，但安森并不同意：“即使是往最好的方向揣测，他们也根本没在使用这个品牌。如果这是真的，那这就不是一个传承品牌。这是一个已经退出市场的闲置品牌，给它定价会是一件困难的事情，因为它没有收入，没有市场占有率，只有残留的认知度。”
Though the Pork Board is subject to federal oversight, what worries Espey and others is that it really operates like a private organization entitled to take farmers’ money, and then spend it out of view of the public – all with the blessing of the USDA.
虽然猪肉委员会受联邦政府监管，Espey和其他人真正担心的是，它实际上像一个有权收取农民金钱的私人组织那么运作，并且它还在公众的视野之外使用这些资金——这些都拜美国农业部所赐。
“The real problem with all of these check-offs is they depend on strict USDA oversight in order to achieve their purpose,” Matthew Penzer, a lawyer for the Humane Society, said. “In this case, that oversight has failed.” The Humane Society has long been critical of the pork lobby and the farming techniques of large pork producers.
“这些缴款方案真正的问题在于，如果想要达到其目标，那将有赖于美国农业部的严格监督，” Matthew Penzer说道，他是人道协会的一名律师。“在这桩案件中，监管失效了。” 人道协会长期以来一直批评猪肉游说活动和大型猪肉生产者的养殖技术。
The suit, filed in 2012, was dismissed for lack of standing in 2013 but the appeals court reversed that dismissal on August 14. The government now has 45 days to appeal the circuit court ruling, before the case returns to the D.C. District Court for a ruling on its substance. In the meantime, the payments continue.
2012年提出的该诉讼在2013年由于缺乏诉讼资格被驳回，但是上诉法院在8月14日推翻了这次驳回。在案件返回到哥伦比亚特区地方法院裁定其实质内容之前，政府现在有45天时间对巡回法院裁决提出上诉。在此期间，支付在继续。
翻译：陆嘉宾（@晚上不买白天买不到）
校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
编辑：辉格@whigzhou