The Growing Attack on American Beef Industry

WARRENTON, Va., June 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Most Americans are unaware of the ongoing assault on the American beef industry—and their personal dietary choices—led by such entities as the World Wildlife Fund, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the United Nations Environment Program. So says Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots action and education foundation dedicated to the promotion of free enterprise and limited government regulations over commerce and individuals.

DeWeese says that while their stated goal is to produce a better grade of beef, their true intention is to ban beef altogether. Surprisingly, he adds, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association is allowing this to happen.

DeWeese says livestock growers have been targets of the environmental and animal rights movements for years. They are beaten down. The involvement by anti-beef environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund is making it worse.   

He explains why: "Like the rest of us they just want to be left alone to work their farms and herds like their forefathers have done for more than a century. But the pressure is growing day by day. So, they have come to believe that if they just go along – put the sustainable label on their product -- then this pressure will stop. The reality is it's not going to go away because the goal is not environmental protection, rather the destruction of their industry and control through what the U.N. calls the reorganization of human society. The attack has now grown to major proportions with the Green New Deal. Beef eaters have no place in the sustainable paradise of city apartment dwellers who accept government controls to choose for them what they are permitted to eat."

DeWeese reports that there are efforts to fight back. A group of cattlemen has organized under the banner of R-CALF (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund) and they have managed to slow the sustainable capture of the industry. But the packers' control of the industry is a major roadblock if the cattlemen can't reach their market. R-CALF has filed Abuse of Conduct suits to shed light on the antitrust activities of the monopoly tactics of the packers.

What Consumers Can Do

DeWeese says consumers who are facing higher prices, possible inferior meat, and the danger of disease, and who want to choose their own foods, need to get mad. They need to demand that "Country of Origin" labels be put on all beef products so they know where their food comes from. They must also demand that the Department of Agriculture reject this sustainable myth and protects the American free market that has always provided superior products.

"So-called sustainable policy is not a free market. It is a government-sanctioned monopoly that is just short of a criminal enterprise. Stand with American farmers and cattlemen. If Americans don't fight back now we will lose the freedom to our own dinner plates in the name of sustainable lies," DeWeese says.     

Credentials: Tom DeWeese is a speaker and nationally recognized property rights advocate who has debated at Cambridge University. He is the president of the American Policy Center and the author of many books including, Sustainable: The WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property and Individuals. DeWeese has been featured by Fox News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and other media nationwide. 

Contact:  Tom DeWeese, (540) 341-8911 (VA); [email protected]; www.americanpolicy.org

SOURCE Tom DeWeese