You Can’t Rebuild the American Cattle Herd With Foreign Beef

Commentary

I understand what President Donald Trump is trying to do. American families are getting crushed at the grocery store, and ground beef has become extraordinarily expensive. For millions of families, this is not an abstract discussion about agricultural policy. It is standing in front of the meat case trying to figure out how to feed four people without spending $30 on dinner.

The president wants to bring that price down. I want it brought down too.

But there is a difference between making beef cheaper for the next 90 days and making America’s food system stronger for the next 90 years. I fear we are confusing the two.

Earlier this year, Trump increased America’s tariff-rate quota by 80,000 metric tons specifically for lean beef trimmings from Argentina. Now the administration has announced something considerably larger: For 90 days, up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef can enter without the normal out-of-quota tariff.

That is approximately 661 million pounds of beef.

Yet a remarkably basic question remains unclear: Where exactly is all this beef coming from?

Which countries are supplying it? How much is coming from each? What standards govern production there? Who negotiated the commitment to sell it below current market prices, and who ultimately receives that discount—the importer, processor, grocery store, or American family standing at the meat counter?

These are not hostile questions. Americans deserve answers when we are talking about bringing hundreds of millions of pounds of food into our country while our own cattle producers are struggling to rebuild the smallest national herd we have had in generations.

I raise cattle. I slaughter cattle and sell beef. I also run a restaurant and feed people for a living. I understand both sides of this equation. I know what families are paying for food, and I know firsthand how expensive it is to produce that food legally in the United States.

American ranchers and processors operate under American land prices, wages, environmental conditions, inspection requirements, sanitation rules, recordkeeping requirements, and regulations. Every one of those becomes part of the cost of producing a pound of American beef.

This is where I struggle with calling cheaper imports a free-market solution.

A free market is supposed to respond to reality. If beef prices are rising, there is a reason. America’s cattle supply is tight. Drought forced producers to liquidate cows. Inputs increased. Processing consolidated. Small slaughterhouses disappeared. Ranchers aged out of the business, while young people face enormous barriers to entering it.

Price is information.

Right now, the price of beef is telling us something important: America needs more cattle.

A rancher seeing higher cattle prices finally has an incentive to retain a heifer rather than send her to slaughter. But cattle are not widgets. That heifer must be bred, must carry a calf for nine months, and must deliver it, and that calf must survive and grow before eventually becoming part of America’s beef supply.

Rebuilding a cattle herd takes years.

So what happens when the market finally sends ranchers a price signal strong enough to justify rebuilding and the government responds by bringing in cheaper beef from countries where land, labor, and regulatory costs may be dramatically different?

We suppress the very signal asking American agriculture to produce more.

Farmers do not get to add up what our land, labor, feed, equipment, taxes, regulation, and financing cost and simply announce what customers must pay. We sell into markets largely beyond our control. When our costs increase faster than commodity prices, we absorb the difference until we cannot anymore.

Then farms disappear.

There is another part of this conversation that bothers me, perhaps because I produce food differently.

What exactly is in an industrial hamburger?

I went looking for an answer, and what I found surprised even me.

Researchers have actually used DNA markers to estimate how many individual cattle contribute to commercial ground-beef production. In one peer-reviewed study examining six one-metric-ton batches of ground beef, researchers estimated that one batch contained meat from approximately 411 individual cattle. Estimates for the other five batches exceeded 1,000 animals, ranging from roughly 1,011 to 1,367 cattle.

That does not mean every hamburger from those batches contained DNA from every one of those animals. But consider the scale of what we are doing.

More than a thousand individual cattle can contribute to a single industrial batch of ground beef.

The National Academies has also described industrial hamburger production in which a single patty may contain meat from 100 animals originating in four different countries. In its discussion of the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak investigation, ground beef from the likely supplier traced back to 443 cattle moving through six states and five slaughterhouses.

Now we are proposing dramatically increasing the amount of imported lean beef that can enter our ground-beef supply.

Maybe I am the only person bothered by this. But I do not think I am.

Do we really believe that continually combining more animals, more processors, more countries, and longer supply chains is the direction we should be moving with our food?

I do not.

I believe food is supposed to have integrity. There is something fundamentally different about knowing the animal, knowing the farmer, knowing the land, and knowing the processor. Call that philosophical, biological, or spiritual. I do not believe food was designed to become anonymous units of protein from potentially hundreds of animals assembled from around the world to achieve the cheapest possible price.

And there is a practical question here too. Every additional animal, processor, and supply chain adds complexity when something goes wrong and we have to trace our food backward.

We are told that countries exporting meat to the United States must maintain inspection systems that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) determines provide an equivalent level of public-health protection.

That sounds reassuring. It matters.

But “equivalent” does not mean identical.

I have traveled outside the United States, including in developing countries, and I have seen firsthand how dramatically infrastructure, enforcement, and everyday practices can differ from one country to another. A government determination that two regulatory systems are equivalent on paper does not mean the farms are identical, the slaughterhouses are identical, the enforcement is identical, or the conditions on the ground are identical.

That does not automatically make imported beef unsafe. But when we dramatically increase imports, Americans are entitled to know where the animals were raised, what production practices were permitted, where they were slaughtered, and what inspection occurred before and after that beef entered our country.

Recent events make those questions particularly relevant.

On Aug. 7, the USDA announced the recall of 29,628 pounds of raw beef imported from Argentina. There were no reported illnesses, and the recall was not triggered by detected E. coli or salmonella.

The beef was recalled because it had entered the United States without receiving the required import reinspection.

It did not simply sit at the border until someone discovered the problem. It had already made its way to distributors and retailers in Texas and Florida.

Those safeguards exist for a reason. If roughly 30,000 pounds can bypass one and enter commercial distribution, it is reasonable to ask how our inspection and traceability systems will perform as we dramatically increase import volumes.

That does not mean Argentine beef is inherently unsafe. It means large, complicated supply chains deserve scrutiny rather than blind faith.

Which brings me to the question underneath this entire debate:

What does America First actually mean when it comes to food?

If America First means helping Americans limp along a little more comfortably for the next few months, cheaper imported beef may accomplish that, lower the grocery bill, relieve some immediate pressure. I understand the impulse.

But if America First means rebuilding the foundations that allow this country to remain strong for generations, we need to make bolder moves.

Make it easier to open small USDA-inspected slaughterhouses. Reduce unnecessary regulatory costs. Invest in regional processing and drought resilience. Make it economically possible for ranchers to retain heifers and rebuild the American cattle herd. Create tax incentives for private landowners who make unused or underused acreage available to farmers and ranchers for grazing. Remove barriers preventing young people from entering agriculture.

If government is going to intervene in the beef market, why not intervene by removing the obstacles preventing Americans from producing more American beef?

Most importantly, how do we make American food more affordable without making American farmers poorer?

There are two clocks running simultaneously.

One belongs to the mother standing in the grocery store today.

The other belongs to the rancher deciding whether to keep a heifer that might produce calves for the next decade.

Good agricultural policy has to see both.

Importing hundreds of millions of pounds of cheaper beef may move a number on a grocery receipt temporarily. It cannot replace the difficult work of rebuilding America’s cattle herd and decentralized processing infrastructure.

I want affordable beef. I understand why Trump wants it too.

But even more than that, I want my children to live in a country capable of feeding itself.

We can keep treating the symptoms of a fragile food system with cheaper imports and temporary interventions, or we can finally rebuild the foundation.

Farmers first. Ranchers first. Regional processing. More land returned to productive grazing. Transparent supply chains. American food produced by American families on American land.

That is not protectionism for its own sake.

It is food sovereignty. And it is resilience.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.