President Trump said Friday that he is authorizing legal documents so American farmers and ranchers can process their own food, calling producers a top priority and saying the change “should move quickly.” The White House posted the statement as the administration tries to ease pressure on beef supplies and give smaller producers more room to compete.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins answered within minutes. “We are on it Mr. President,” she wrote, calling U.S. ranchers’ beef a matter of national security and previewing a package of USDA actions starting Monday.
Those steps, she said, include:
-waiving red tape in processing
-expanding ranchers’ ability to sell across state lines
-rescinding outdated guidance
-adding technology for faster safety data
-more funding and deregulation for small processors
-steps against consolidation so small plants can compete
-expanding truth-in-labeling
“The world is hungry for American beef,” Rollins added. “MUCH MORE TO COME!”
The announcement follows a public conversation earlier this week in which conservative host and rancher Glenn Beck pressed Trump on federal rules that, he argued, make it hard for producers to butcher and sell their own cattle. Trump said he had “been hearing about this problem for 20 years” and that less regulation “could be a very good call.”
The U.S. beef herd is historically low, grocery prices for beef have stayed high, and the administration has paired a longer-term herd-rebuilding problem with a short-term solution to import foreign ground beef.
Not everyone treated Friday’s announcement as a breakthrough. Rep. Thomas Massie replied that farmers can already process meat for themselves and that buyers can already purchase a whole animal. He said the bigger issue is selling meat “by the cut.” Custom slaughter versus inspected commercial sales across state lines is the gap the USDA will have to address if the policy is to change who can sell beef and where.
USDA has already been working on small-plant capacity this year, including a Small Processors Action Plan and the $500 million SPUR program for independent and mid-size beef plants. Rollins says she will continue to tackle the issues of less paperwork, more local processing, clearer labels (possibly returning to labels with country of origin?), and lifting other regulatory burdens to help our ranchers and farmers.
Details of the legal documents Trump said he is authorizing have not been released. The administration says those papers, and USDA’s Monday announcements, are meant to move the idea from a presidential pledge into rules producers can actually use.
