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Over the years, Congress has created or authorized the creation of numerous entities to carry out federal programs and further public purposes. Collectively, these entities receive trillions of dollars annually in funds appropriated by Congress. Given the wide variety of entity types, applicability of key broad-based requirements, and federal funding, this report: (1) identified and categorized federally created entities by type; (2) determined the extent to which the various entity types are generally subject to key broad-based statutory governance, accountability, and transparency requirements; and (3) determined the amount of appropriations Congress has made directly available to each of the individual entities in recent years (FY 2005 through 2008).

U.S. producers, importers, and others handling a variety of agricultural products pay millions of dollars annually for promotion and research programs to increase domestic and foreign sales of these products. This report presents information on these programs: how U.S. check-off programs are organized and what kinds of activities they carry out, what factors the check-off boards consider in planning future program activities, and how comparable marketing organ's. in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K. are organized and carry out their activities.