The Trump administration wants to ensure the success of the beef industry, but it needs to keep growing its herd, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at CattleCon in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday.

“We're doing everything we can to encourage people to increase the size of the herds in this country,” Kennedy said in a conversation with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Buck Wehrbein. “It can't be 18 months or more before we start seeing that.”

He said many producers, “because of fluctuations in the markets or uncertainty,” are slaughtering breeding cows. He asked them to stop doing that. 

“We want to make it here in America. We don't want to be importing it from other countries,” he said, prompting applause.

Kennedy received an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd as he ticked off some of the Trump administration’s efforts on nutrition and healthcare.

Attendees gave him a big hand when he said, “Nobody in the administration wants to eat imported beef.” The administration faced heavy criticism from ranchers when it said last year it would provide Argentina $40 billion in financial assistant through a $20 billion currency swap and $20 billion in private funds.

Kennedy touted the release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans last month, in particular its placement of animal protein at the top of the new food pyramid.

He said the Food and Drug Administration is conducting studies to determine the wisdom of the guidelines’ recommendation that Americans get no more than 10% of their calories from saturated fats.

The debate over saturated fats before the release of the guidelines was “probably the biggest battle,” Kennedy said.

“We took a very conservative stand, and we said we're limited to, I think, nine or 10%, but one of the things that we're looking at now is that issue specifically – how much saturated fat you should have. We know you need a lot more protein. That's the most important thing, to get the protein into your body." 

But, he added, “There are still questions about saturated fat, and there's a lot of other knowledge gaps. And NIH is now doing those studies. FDA is doing those studies for the first time.”

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