The Soaring Price Of Beef

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

You have doubtless seen the price of beef at the store. It is shocking, outrageous really, ticking up higher and higher each week. When all this began four years ago, many people assumed that prices would settle back down after the crisis ended. That has not happened. The problem is getting worse, not better.

Checking in on the CPI for ground beef, we were shocked to see double-digit rates of inflation. The price of beef steaks in five years has gone up fully 50 percent and keeps rising.

Right now, the beef inflation rate is running at an astonishing 12.4 percent.

The price of ground beef has fully doubled in 10 years.

This isn’t just government data. Industry sources are showing beef prices running far ahead of other groceries.

This is happening just as more science is showing how essential beef is for human health. It is not the only good meat but it contains the most of what we need for health, weight control, energy, building muscle, and organ strength. There is growing market demand for everything from ground beef to steaks.

The growing demand is coinciding with a 50-year decline in the size of herds. Feedlot reports: “The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released its Cattle report on January 31st. The total of all cattle and calves on January 1, 2025, was estimated at 86.662 million head, about 0.5 million fewer than the previous year. This marks the 6th year of contraction for aggregate beef and dairy cattle inventories and the 11th year overall of the current cattle cycle—the cyclical expansion and contraction of the national cattle herd over time. The cycle is influenced by the combined effects of cattle prices, input costs that drive cow-calf producer profitability, the gestation period for cattle, the time needed for raising calves to market weight, and climate conditions.”

This could become a huge problem for the Trump administration. If inflation in food prices and beef in particular keep going like this, there is a genuine risk to the presidency and the entire Republican Party. People who are not actually very political tend to judge the party in power by how much they have to spend at the grocery. If they find themselves switching from beef to rice and beans, they will blame the ruling party regardless.

So far, it does not appear to be a priority with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to address this huge problem with anything more than the status quo. This has to change.

I would suggest a three-point agenda for the Trump administration. It needs to be enacted immediately to keep this problem from spinning out of control.

First, there needs to be emergency deregulation of any existing barriers that keep farmers and other middle sources from getting product to the stores.

Two main regulatory bodies deal with this problem: the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Vast paperwork and technology are required just to track the sourcing and every state has rules on storage and more. It’s a system worthy of a Soviet-style central plan. All these are clogging up supply chains such that many bureaucrats are intervening at each stage.

All these regulations consolidate the industry into only the largest players who know the ropes and can navigate the bureaucracies. All these rules need to be relaxed so that sellers can work directly with wholesalers to assure safe and good products. Fixing this problem could even require a fast executive order, backed by legislation.

Second, there must be focus on the problem of the USDA’s strict monopoly on processing meat. This adds dramatically to time and expense, and pointlessly so. Farmers must have the absolute right to on-site processing followed by sales of all sorts. The entire USDA system must be crushed and competition in meat processing permitted. The monopoly must end.

The PRIME act needs a quick passage. It stands for Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption Act. This act would: Allow states to permit the intrastate sale (within state borders) of custom-slaughtered meat—such as beef, pork, or lamb—from these facilities to consumers, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, and other food service outlets. Meat would no longer require full federal USDA inspection for intrastate transactions. This would allow genuine farm-to-table meat, vastly reduce costs, and immediately increase supply on the shelves.

In addition, this would reduce the costs of slaughter and incentivize a bolstering of herds, relaxing existing price pressure.

Third, all meat imported from abroad should be exempt from tariffs and quotas that are currently increasing wholesale and retail pricing. This should be done in the name of saving the American diet, and maybe even saving the Trump presidency. I get that Trump believes that tariffs are necessary to protect the U.S. industry, but right now they risk pillaging the U.S. consumer. These tariffs should not apply to meat in a time of crisis.

The laws governing meat in this country are ancient, dating even from 1906. They were put in place to help large industry players in a time of grave doubt about the safety and cleanliness of the industry. Contrary to myth, the industry fully supported the regulations because they knew for sure that they would consolidate the industry and bolster consumer confidence. Unfortunately, the new rules bogged down the local farmer and added costs. All these many years later, they are still in place but serve no real function.

The remaining independent beef farmers in this country need the freedom to sell directly to stores and restaurants and to customers. People would absolutely love the chance to buy directly, knowing exactly the farmer and rancher they are supporting. The existing system does not allow this.

The Trump administration needs to place an urgent call to The Beef Initiative, founded in 2021 to make “food more localized, redundant, and secure. We serve our community by providing market access to producers and consumers who understand the importance of food integrity.”

There are many such organizations and knowledgeable farmers. Joel Salatin of Polyface must be a top consultant to guide the White House.

Such efforts are completely consistent with the agenda of MAHA. Currently, prioritizing this is not on the agenda but it must be. The last thing we need are price controls or an angry public that can no longer afford real beef.

No one wants the fake product being pushed by those who favor “lab-grown meat” or the “impossible burger,” much less the agenda to eat bugs instead of cows, chicken, and pigs. So far, inflation in beef has not been so terrible as to make it forbidding to the average family. That is changing and quickly.

The Trump administration dealt well with the egg crisis by increasing supply and stopping the hen slaughter. Egg prices are down substantially. The same needs to happen with cows now.