By Lorrie Baumann

American ranchers and farmers producing grass-fed beef and pork are asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop letting multinational cattle companies import meat into the U.S. and then label it for sale to consumers as a “Product of the USA.” They’re arguing that a package that’s labeled as a “Product of the USA” in the supermarket ought to contain meat from an animal that was born, raised and harvested in the U.S., and they say that’s not what’s happening now.

What’s at issue is a USDA policy that provides that meat products may be labeled “Product of the USA” if “the product is processed in the U.S. (i.e., is of domestic origin).” That policy is being applied to mean that any imported meat, which must have a USDA inspection when it enters the country, goes into the plant as foreign meat, and once it has the USDA inspection stamp on it, it has become a “Product of the USA,” according to a 2017 report on the market potential for U.S. grass-fed beef published by the non-profit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The American livestock producers, led by the American Grassfed Association (AGA) and the Organization for Competitive Markets are asking the USDA to change its policy to require that if a product’s producers want to label it as a “Product of the USA,” they should have to show that the meat, vegetables, fruits and dairy products inside the package were actually of domestic origin. “The USDA and the American government are doing a disservice,” said Jack Whisnant, who raises American Pasture Pork and Rain Crow Ranch beef in Missouri and is an AGA member. “The consumer has no idea what they’re actually eating because the USDA is allowing foreign meat to come into the country labeled as a product of the U.S.”

The AGA and Organization for Competitive Markets petition to the USDA is currently under review by the agency. “It’s an uphill battle,” said Carrie Balkcom, the AGA’s Executive Director, “The consumer is buying a product they think is coming from here, and it probably isn’t.”

As much as 75 to 80 percent of the grass-fed beef being sold in this country is imported from places like Australia, Uruguay and Brazil, Balkcom said. “When we started ‘grass-fed,’ nobody knew what it was, but now that people are recognizing it, multinational corporations have come in from offshore and are exploiting it, to the detriment of American farmers.” Those multinational corporations include Cargill, Tyson, JBS and National Beef, which together control percent of the cattle market, according to a 2017 study by the Organization for Competitive Markets, an advocacy organization headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska whose goal is “to ensure agricultural markets are fair and transparent.” The organization was instrumental in passing mandatory country of origin labeling in 2002, a law that was subsequently repealed by Congress after Canadian and Mexican meat producers complained to the World Trade Organization that the labeling was hurting their ability to export meat into the U.S.

Recently, though, American farmers’ frustration with that situation has come to a head because the bottom dropped out of the market for American-raised grass-fed beef and pork when foreign companies were allowed, not just to avoid labeling their meat as the product of the country where it was born and raised, but as an actual product of the U.S., says Will Harris, the owner of White Oak Pastures, who raises AGA-certified beef in Georgia and is one of the largest producers of grass-fed beef in this country. “I knew something was happening because we went from not being able to keep up with demand for our grass-fed beef to having to cut margins to move our grass-fed beef,” he said. “Over a six-month period or so, we went from not being able to keep up to having to hustle to make a living.”

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“I’m not against competition, but I am against deceptive labeling,” said Kevin Fulton, a Nebraska farmer who’s been grass-finishing cattle for the past 16 years. Today, he’s having trouble selling his grass-fed beef because he can’t afford to compete on price with grass-fed beef from other countries. Fulton practices intensive grazing on his irrigated pastures, and his herd of Galloway-Hereford-Angus beef cows used to sell by the truckload to buyers who were eager to pay him enough to repay the cost of raising those animals. “I had a broker who would routinely tell me that he could take as many truckloads as I could produce, and the price was very good,” he said. “We can’t sell those truckloads anymore, and if we do, then the price is about half.”

The consumers being most hurt by the deception are those buying grass-fed meats for what Harris thinks are the right reasons – because they care about the welfare of the animals, regenerative land use practices and the economic regeneration of American rural communities. “My customers want to benefit the animals in this country, not halfway around the world,” he said. “This claim is particularly fraudulent for my customers than for customers who might prefer grass-fed beef for health or flavor reasons,” Balkcom said.

The AGA members say there’s only one way now for American consumers to be sure that the beef and pork is actually a grass-fed product of an American farm, and that’s to look for the AGA seal on the package. To earn the seal, the animal must have been fed a 100 percent forage-based diet, with no antibiotics, no added hormones, no confinement and good animal husbandry. “We don’t allow folks to feed forage in confinement and call it ‘grass-fed.’ The animals have to have continual access to pasture.”

Whisnant’s family started Rain Crow Ranch several generations ago. He’s been actively marketing grass-fed beef for 30 years and is another large domestic producer of grass-fed beef in the U.S. A practitioner of regenerative agriculture, he’s also just become the first pasture-raised pork producer in the U.S. to be certified by the AGA. While he expects to survive the competition with foreign grass-fed meats because he has long-standing customers who count on him for the quality of his meats just like he counts on them to appreciate that quality when they consider the price they’re willing to offer, he’s no longer advising young farmers who don’t have those established customers they can expect to make a living raising grass-fed animals, he said.

“We are so committed to following the AGA label because we are 100 percent committed to making sure our animals are grass-fed from birth to harvest,” Whisnant said. “No grain, no animal by-products. It is very important for the consumer to know the labeling so they can buy American-raised, born-and-bred-in-the-U.S. beef, and they know that because somebody is out there checking on the label…. For the knowledgeable consumer, verification by the AGA is considered the gold standard because they go out every year and physically inspect the farms to ensure that what they’re saying is the truth.”