Trump’s “Highest Quality” Mystery Beef: Safety Questions Mount
President Donald Trump announced last week that the United States would temporarily open the door to a massive new influx of foreign beef. He promised it would lower prices and be of “the highest quality.”
There was one problem: He would not say where the beef was coming from.
On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has added another complication. Apparently, the concluded deal Trump announced may not actually be finalized just yet. She also suggested that she was not directly involved in the negotiations behind the announcement. Finally, Rollins, much like her boss, refused to name the countries and foreign producers involved.
That secrecy has fueled understandable unease among Americans, along with growing speculation about what exactly may be entering the food supply.
Whatever the answer, the developments fit neatly, and disturbingly, into the broader globalist push to reduce meat consumption.
Rollins: “Not Privy to Talk”
As The New American reported yesterday, Trump posted Friday that the United States would allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to enter tariff-free for 90 days. He said foreign suppliers had committed to sell it at 25 percent below current market prices.
The White House said Trump would formalize the arrangement with an executive order within two weeks.
Yet when Rollins was asked Tuesday which countries had agreed to supply the beef, she could not say. Roll Call quoted her:
“I am not privy to talk about that,” she said. “I think the conversations are still going on. And that’s Ambassador [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer, who’s finalizing what exactly that looks like, and I think the president’s involved in that, as well.”
Her answer raised more questions than it answered.
It is strange enough that negotiations apparently remain underway after Trump publicly announced the arrangement. Stranger still, the secretary of agriculture appears to be outside the talks.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for safeguarding the nation’s food supply. Its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) oversees imported meat and other products, determines whether foreign inspection systems meet U.S. requirements, and reinspects shipments entering the country.
Yet Rollins said she had not even spoken with Trump about this concrete notice:
“You know, [Trump] and I have talked a lot about this for a very very long time. I have not talked to him specifically about this specific announcement and what that looks like,” Rollins said. “But I do know he’s working very, very closely with Jamieson Greer on it.”
Even those two answers do not quite line up. In one, Rollins said she “thinks” Trump is involved. In the next, she said she “does know” he is working closely with Greer.
But the bigger mystery is more basic: Why will the administration not simply tell Americans which countries it is dealing with?
Trump: “I Don’t Wanna Say…”
On Friday, Trump declined to answer the same obvious question. Per Roll Call:
“I don’t wanna say which countries,” he told reporters … “But there are a few countries. But they’re going to be sending in the highest-quality beef, and it’s something that we need.”
That is an extraordinary level of secrecy for an agreement involving hundreds of thousands of tons of food destined for American consumers.
Sure, trade negotiations can involve confidential details. But the identity of a country supplying beef is hardly a minor matter. Different countries have different animal disease histories, inspection systems, production practices, and records of compliance with U.S. food safety requirements.
If the beef is truly of the “highest quality,” as Trump says, why not identify its origin?
Now the secrecy surrounding the “deal” is fueling questions, and increasingly speculation, about exactly what kind of beef could soon be landing on American tables.
Argentine Problems
Some of the loudest concerns center on Argentina.
Trump already expanded Argentina’s tariff-free beef quota by 80,000 metric tons in February.
Earlier this month, USDA recalled nearly 30,000 pounds of Argentine beef after it entered the United States without the required import reinspection.
Frigorifico Gorina SAIC produced the beef, which distributors sent to Florida and Texas. USDA said it had received no reports of illness.
While the recall did not show that the meat was contaminated, it did show that a required inspection step had failed.
Another troubling case has also resurfaced.
In March, China suspended imports from Argentina’s ArreBeef plant after a 22-ton shipment tested positive for chloramphenicol, an antibiotic prohibited for use in food-producing cattle.
Argentine authorities later reported that they inspected 12 cattle operations connected to the shipment. They said their inspections found no evidence of chloramphenicol use and pointed to other possible explanations, including cross-contamination or a false positive.
There is no evidence that Trump’s new import plan involves that shipment. There is not even confirmation that Argentina is among the unnamed countries in the new arrangement.
Still, the lack of basic information has fueled speculation.
One viral post, which had drawn more than three million views on X by Wednesday afternoon, claimed the United States was buying the same Argentine beef rejected by China. Straight Arrow News examined the clip and found the core claim “unsubstantiated”:
It’s unclear where the recent shipment of rejected beef products is now, but the U.S. would also reject it if it detected any level of chloramphenicol, as Chinese agriculture officials did.
That reassurance, however, depends on confidence that the inspection system catches what it is supposed to catch. But the recent recall of Argentine beef that entered the country without required USDA reinspection does not exactly inspire that confidence.
Horse Meat?
The information vacuum has produced an even more dramatic theory.
NewsNation reported this week that online users began linking Trump’s beef announcement to a separate story involving American wild horses. The report reads:
The New York Times reported last week the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is allowing the sale of wild horses to middlemen — sometimes for $25 each — who then turn around and sell the horses to slaughterhouses abroad that process them for meat. According to the report, these types of sales have surged under both Trump administrations.
Some social-media users then made the leap that horse meat could return to the United States disguised as beef.
There is no evidence that this is happening.
USDA says there are currently no USDA-inspected horse slaughter plants in the United States. Federal funding restrictions prevent FSIS from conducting inspections of horses slaughtered domestically for human consumption.
Imported meat is also supposed to be identified by species, and FSIS can test imported products to verify species.
So far, the horse-meat theory remains just that, a theory.
The administration could put many of these rumors to rest by simply naming the countries and plants involved.
War on Meat — and the Producers
The lack of transparency surrounding Trump’s beef plan has already fueled social-media calls to “stop eating beef.” That comes as American cattle producers face intense pressure from rising costs, foreign competition, and a shrinking domestic herd, with many going out of business.
It also lands against a broader globalist campaign to reduce meat consumption.
The United Nations and its strategic partner, the World Economic Forum (WEF), are openly promoting reduced meat consumption as part of their population-contol agenda. In one 2019 post, the WEF said:
Global meat consumption must fall … a United Nations report on the effects of climate change concluded.
[The report] called for big changes to farming and eating habits to limit the impact of population growth and changing consumption patterns on stretched land and water resources.
In that context, policies that weaken American cattle producers while making consumers more wary of beef risk producing the same result: less domestic beef and fewer Americans eating it.
