The American cattle industry has been front and center for the Trump administration lately. Just last week, President Donald Trump lowered tariffs on imported beef from select countries in an effort to “reduce prices for Americans.” But after publicly receiving backlash from American cattle farmers and ranchers, Trump attempted to rebound on Truth Social by announcing that “ranchers and farmers have always been a number one priority for me” and as a result, he would allow them to “process their own food.”
For those unfamiliar with the meat industry, “processing” refers to slaughtering the animals.
Trump cited the “tremendous problem” of “big [meat] processors, who many say are a nasty monopoly.” These processors “make life miserable for our wonderful farmers and ranchers.” So, the president declared that he is “authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow farmers and ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD.”
JIM WATSON via Getty Images
Almost all meat produced in the U.S. is processed off the farm, so asking farmers to slaughter their beef would introduce a whole new step.
The post came just days after conservative political commentator Glenn Beck urged the president during a phone call on “The Glenn Beck Program“ to “please, please … look at the cartel that is the meat-processing cartel.”
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), which is the largest lobbying group that represents cattle farmers in the U.S., has not commented on the post, and reactions have been mixed on social media. But agriculture experts say the idea that the people who raise cattle could actually process it is far-fetched — and potentially unsanitary. Here’s why.
How is beef currently raised and processed in the U.S.?
In the U.S., the process of raising cattle and processing (i.e., slaughtering) the animals is separate. “For the majority of these cattle, they’re grown to 1,500 or 1,600 pounds and are shipped to a processor,” explained Andrew Griffith, a livestock economist and professor at the University of Tennessee.
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We don’t have the resources to do that. … The majority of farmers are not interested in doing any harvesting at their place.
– Andrew Griffith, livestock economist and professor at the University of Tennessee
“Nearly all meat produced in the U.S. is processed off the farm,” said Jaime Luke, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University. “Processors vary in size, with the largest firms controlling a commanding share of the market.”
There are four main beef processors in the U.S.: JBS SA, Cargill, Tyson Foods Inc., and National Beef Packing Co., which are known as “the Big Four.” Collectively, these groups control 85% of all cattle purchases.
“Those facilities are federally inspected,” Griffith said. There, the animals are slaughtered, processed, boxed and shipped to grocery stores and warehouses across the country. “That’s what typically happens,” Griffith said.
There are also smaller state-inspected facilities and custom-harvest facilities that typically handle smaller amounts of cattle, Griffith said. These usually cater to people with small herds who may raise cattle, take it to a custom facility, and bring the meat back home rather than selling it in stores.
Do cattle farmers want to process their own meat?
Probably not. “This just doesn’t happen,” Griffith said. “We don’t have the resources to do that.” (A representative from NCBA did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.)
Processing meat is complicated and involves several steps, Griffith said. “There are not cattle farmers that want to have a good cow-slaughtering day,” he said. “Hogs you can process on the farm, but a 1,500-pound animal is a different story. The majority of farmers are not interested in doing any harvesting at their place.”
Processing meat involves actually killing the animals, cutting up the meat and having cooler space, Griffith pointed out. “You have to get that carcass cooled down as fast as possible and need to have the skill to cut that animal up,” he said. “Farmers don’t have that — they don’t have the tools, space, or know-how.”
Meat processing is all about efficiency, Luke said. “Large processors operate at extremely efficient levels, allowing them to minimize costs, resulting in lower prices for consumers,” she said. “Most producers do not have the infrastructure to process their own meat, and the upfront investment is very costly. Those costs could be passed on to consumers in the form of higher meat prices, which questions the ability of small farmer-processors to be able to compete with large, established processors.”
What does this mean for food safety?
The proposal “raises concerns” about food safety, according to Darin Detwiler, author of the book “Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions” and a professor at Northeastern University. While Detwiler says that allowing ranches access to more small, USDA-inspected processing facilities could be a “constructive response” to the industry’s concentration, he has concerns about food safety.
“Allowing uninspected meat to be sold by the cut, especially across state lines, would be a fundamentally different proposal,” Detwiler said. “The question is not whether ranchers are clean, responsible or trustworthy. The question is whether meat sold to the public remains subject to enforceable sanitation, inspection, testing, labeling, recordkeeping and traceability requirements.”
If ranchers become processors and sellers, they would then assume responsibilities that currently rest with processing facilities, including preventing fecal contamination during slaughter, maintaining sanitary equipment, controlling refrigeration and identifying product that’s impacted by foodborne contamination, Detwiler said.
Ultimately, “there are more legitimate problems than benefits behind the proposal,” he said.
What happens now?
To date, there have been no publicly available “legal documents” to change federal laws around meat processing in the U.S.
“It is unclear which regulations would change with this new announcement,” Luke said.
Griffith said he isn’t sure anything will change with this proposal — or that it even makes sense.
“This doesn’t compute,” he said.