 |
| image generated via Grok |
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins refuses to say where proposed beef imports would be originating; ranchers are furious. {The Independent 25 August}
As if much of the food we consume in this country were not toxic enough… Every American ought to feel a profound sense of revulsion, and be even more disgusted still by this regime’s steadfast refusal to disclose the provenance of this miraculous ground beef. In all seriousness, there are occasions of late upon which I find myself thinking I should never wish to eat again. Transparency ought to constitute the bare minimum where the nation's food supply is concerned, but who and what can be trusted these days? —
FTA: Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has refused to say which countries the Trump administration is relying on for its plan to temporarily surge beef imports into the U.S. to ease consumer prices.
“I am not privy to talk about that,” Rollins told reporters on Tuesday. “I think the conversations are still going on,” she added, saying that President Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were involved.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, President Trump claimed he had reached a deal to allow up to 300,000 metric tons of meat destined to become ground beef into the U.S. to be sold at reduced prices for the next 90 days without tariffs or quotas. The plan, Trump said, would “substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families.”
A White House official told The Independent last week that Trump would “formally sign an executive order” to execute the agreement “within the next two weeks.”
Since Trump returned to office last year, the price of ground beef has risen from $5.45 per pound to $6.85 per pound, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On Monday, an Arizona border crossing reopened to Mexican cattle, as fears have eased over the spread of the New World screwworm through Mexican cattle imports. The U.S. plans to open more border crossings as part of the beef plan.
The Trump administration’s beef deal has met with stiff resistance from ranchers and Republicans, who argue that allowing more imports will do little to change the underlying conditions that have sent beef prices spiking, such as low herd sizes because of drought.
"Despite high beef prices in grocery stores, prices paid to farmers and ranchers for their cattle have fallen sharply over the past two months, and beef packing plants are shutting down across the U.S.,” American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said in a statement after the plan was announced.
"Further undercutting a fragile recovery by swamping markets with foreign products and attempting to manipulate prices threatens to wipe out any progress that has been made,” he added.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
