USDA puts the USA back in beef
New, USDA rules say meat carrying the voluntary label of “Product of USA” must come from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States. Previously, imported meat could sometimes receive a U.S. label after relatively limited processing here.
That’s a big deal for American cattle ranchers, who have argued for years that consumers couldn’t always tell whether the beef they were buying was actually American.
And now the Trump administration wants to go further.
President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing USDA and the U.S. Trade Representative to examine bringing back mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef. Mandatory labeling was repealed by Congress in 2015 following trade disputes with Canada and Mexico, so fully restoring it could require congressional action.
There’s also an interesting contradiction in current beef policy.
The administration is encouraging Americans to buy U.S. beef and trying to rebuild a cattle herd that’s at a 75-year low — while simultaneously allowing an additional 300,000 metric tons of lower-tariff imported lean beef to help bring down record-high prices. Ranchers worry those imports could put downward pressure on what they’re paid just as Washington is encouraging them to expand their herds.
For consumers, the takeaway is simple: if that package says “Product of USA,” it can’t just be foreign beef that was packaged here.
The cattle had to be American from birth to butcher.
This story was compiled with the aid of AI.
