Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the “other white meat” campaign to stimulate pork consumption. Harder still to believe that all that salesmanship, now costing hog farmers $48 million a year in mandated fees, has stimulated consumption by a less than 4 percent, from 51.5 pounds per person in 1985 to 53.4 last year.

Hardest of all to believe that the USDA is fighting tooth and nail — OK, snout and hoof — to keep this failed program alive.

The agency is buried under petitions signed by nearly 20,000 hog farmers calling for an industry-wide referendum on the promotion fee of 45 cents for every $100 of animal value. Rather than simply admit the obvious, that the public’s appetite for pork has been rather clearly assessed, the USDA is mounting an exhaustive challenge to the validity of the signatures and a massive public-relations campaign to get farmers to change their minds.

Some of the fee does fund research, such as the research that has resulted in leaner pigs and lower-fat pork. While aiding the development of more healthful foods might be a legitimate function of government, the petitioning farmers want an accounting of how much of their 45 cents goes into science and how much into sales pitches. They want the right to decide whether they should do what many other industries do — join together voluntarily to fund their own research — and they certainly want to get out of an ad campaign that’s not working. And now, even farmers who were ambivalent about the fee are sore about the USDA’s rather blatant attempt to thwart the democratic process.

This is not the first time the food industry has objected to government-enforced marketing initiatives. Dairy producers want out of the USDA’s $100 million “Got Milk?” campaign, which, though cute, has not stimulated the public thirst. “Beef — it’s what’s for dinner” has hardly made a dent in the cattle population. Just last year, California peach growers, with costs rising and sales flat, took their opposition to a state-mandated marketing fee all the way to the Supreme Court. And lost.

It is estimated that all the various federal and state marketing fees cost food producers upward of $2 billion a year, which ultimately is passed along to the consumer. Government, federal and state, has a duty to ensure a safe food supply. It can make a case for assisting in research. But it cannot justify being in the advertising business — especially when it does it so badly.