Americans love ground beef. It’s been our budget, versatile and convenient cut—our secret weapon. But America’s appetite for ground beef long ago outstripped our production capacity. In the mid-70s, we were slaughtering 11 million cull cows annually. Now, it’s about 5.5 million. Americans spent $15 billion in 2024 on ground beef alone. Our cow slaughter produces around 1 billion pounds of lean ground beef. We import about 4 billion lbs. of lean beef for grinding to mix with our fed cattle trim—four times our domestic production. Consumers are unhappy that a trip through the drive-thru for two cheeseburger meals runs $25-30 these days.
Without any imported lean beef, our ground beef supply would shrink by 70-80%, vastly increasing prices. The price of ground beef could triple or more, as we lost economies of scale and companies. How many people could afford the drive-thru trip at $50-60 or more? Overall demand for beef would crater because few families could afford to live only on steak and prime rib, ground beef would be expensive, and many young people don’t know how to cook or have the time for roasts.
Even today, a 600-lb. cull cow carcass will yield about 200 lbs. of lean beef. Imagine the drop credit if packers were sending lots of fed carcass trimmings to rendering because we had so little lean to mix with the trim and trim had less value. We consume about 27 lbs. of ground beef per capita now. Imagine cutting that figure by the loss of 80% of our lean beef supply. The lean imported beef amounts to 10% of our total U.S. beef production.
I have been a big supporter of President Donald Trump’s work, but his attack on the beef production chain by ordering the Department of Justice to investigate the packers is misguided.
The nation’s Big Four don’t have a monopoly. A monopoly—“mono”—means one company having an entire market to itself (see local utilities). We’ve also added capacity. If the big packers manipulate the beef markets, why are they losing hundreds of millions? If they were smart and powerful enough to manipulate the markets, they wouldn’t be. With competitive procurement and contracting, radio and newspaper reporting, reports on cattlemen’s computers and phones, and Mandatory Livestock Reporting multiple times a day, the beef production chain is the most open and competitive it’s ever been.
Tyson Foods is publicly traded. Cargill is a privately owned family American business. JBS is a publicly traded company, with headquarters in Greeley, CO, and home offices in Brazil. JBS and National Beef have Americans at or near the top of their management chains. Swift wasn’t sold for years until JBS brought capital and expertise here.
The U.S. beef industry needs imports of lean beef to make the volume of ground beef that Americans love. The beef we import is processed under USDA-equivalent safety standards. The beef we import is sourced and purchased by our processors. We do not need the U.S. government to purchase beef from any country to dump on our market to lower prices to the production chain. No foreign country could get away with dumping like that. “Illicit collusion,” “price fixing” and “price manipulation” are irresponsible allegations used by anti-free market types in ill-advised lawsuits that prove nothing because there’s no evidence.
Droughts in Australia and New Zealand provided a new opening for Brazil to provide much more lean beef. Putting big tariffs on Brazilian products has made the supply situation more complicated and expensive. We do need the U.S. government to continue and accelerate everything to keep the New World screwworm out. We need supplies of Mexican feeder cattle as soon as safely possible. President Joe Biden’s antitrust acolytes failed to find evidence of misdeeds by packers. Trump’s free market advisers can explain the number of primary players in the market does not automatically imply unfair competition. Besides, there are dozens of midsize and many smaller processors.
I remember the beef boycotts of the ’70s. We understand frustration with higher food prices. Consumers’ ire over food supplies and prices is real. But food production is complex, plagued by higher costs and exacerbated by uncontrollable weather. We understand Trump’s responsiveness to consumer complaints. But we can’t have direct intervention in our free-market beef production chain. It’s unfair, fails and worsens the future. Beef prices are a delicate balance. Disease misperceptions, ill-advised government actions or prosecution could wreck prices. Cattlemen would love to produce more at these prices, but Mother Nature must cooperate. Drought, the resurrection of old pests and government persecution or intervention are not what we need. — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
