Facing growing anger from the cattle industry, the Trump administration released a plan outlining steps it is taking to boost domestic cattle production and beef consumption while lowering retail prices. There is no mention of President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to increase beef imports.
Many of the measures in the 13-page plan are relatively modest or were in the works. The action items are intended to induce producers to expand herds while reducing regulatory costs, including reduced overtime fees for USDA inspection of small-scale processors.
The plan includes measures that are already in process, such as killing a Biden-era rule reducing water pollution from packing plants and revising the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans to boost meat consumption. The plan says the new guidelines will include recommendations “encouraging protein as the foundation for every meal.”
The plan comes at the same time the White House has angered producers and many GOP lawmakers with Trump’s idea of boosting imports of Argentinian beef. Earlier Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that cattle producers were only doing well because of his tariff policy. In actual fact, cattle and beef prices have remained relatively high since before he took office because of historically low cattle numbers.
The plan calls for opening up 24 million acres of unused grazing allotments on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, representing about 10% of the 29,000 grazing allotments in use nationwide.
USFS, which is part of USDA, and BLM, an agency in the Interior Department, will “jointly assess” the viability of these available lands and “prioritize reopening them for permitted use,” the plan says.
Jonathan Wood, vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center, previously told Agri-Pulse that some parcels of federal land eligible for grazing were voluntarily retired as a result of negotiations between ranchers and conservation groups.
If these lands were once again opened up to grazing, he said conservation groups would probably stop trying to work with landowners and turn to litigation instead.
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Litigation is "not really a great outcome for anybody, but that would definitely be how many in the conservation community would respond if some of those closed allotments got reopened,” Wood said earlier this month.
The plan also says the Forest Service and BLM aim to streamline permitting by creating a “unified permitting framework that minimizes duplicative documentation” and establishing “expedited pathways for renewals under categorical exclusions.” It also suggests allowing “outcome-based grazing agreements” that “tailor stocking rates and timing to local conditions,” such as looking into potential uses for virtual fencing technologies.
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service will begin enforcing compliance with voluntary labeling claims such as “Product of USA” and “Made in the USA,” according to the plan.
The department issued a final rule in March 2024 clarifying that those labels mean the meat comes from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the U.S.
“We're pleased that the administration is moving forward to enforce that," said Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, who said of the plan, “I think most producers would view this as encouraging.”
“Right now, the meatpackers can bring in a foreign beef product and remove it from its original wrapper and place a new wrapper on it and put a ‘Product of USA’ label on,” Bullard said. “There are products now that are being mislabeled in the domestic market.”
“Further adoption of state and local labeling claims could lead to additional premiums for those producers and processors providing high-quality, local beef products to American consumers,” the plan said.
Even as the administration is canceling some reports – such as the Food Security Survey that was scheduled for publication today – the plan said USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service “will continue to make public cattle and beef market information under the Livestock Mandatory Reporting program and will make available the Cattle Contract Library and other reporting tools to ensure producers have clear, timely market information.”
The plan also contemplates use of better methods to determine compensation for predator losses and “improving the Livestock Indemnity Program and Livestock Forage Program to offer higher and earlier payment rates to producers.”
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