A few weeks ago, Donald Trump announced a controversial new policy, seemingly out of nowhere: The president declared his intention to import foreign beef without imposing a tariff and below current market prices.
The news was not widely applauded. The American beef industry wasn’t pleased, and neither were Republican lawmakers from Western and Midwestern states. The White House suggested the policy was intended to help consumers ahead of the midterm elections, but making matters worse was that there was no reason to assume consumers would notice an immediate difference in prices.
But there was a foundational question at the heart of the policy: Where, exactly, would the imported beef come from?
Asked which foreign countries would be involved in his ostensible agreement hours after his initial statement, Trump refused to say. He also failed to explain the need for secrecy.
The following week, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who presumably was in a position to shed light on the policy’s details, was also asked about where the imported beef would come from.
“I am actually not part of any of those conversations,” she replied. Later that day, Rollins held a brief Q&A with reporters outside the White House, where she was again asked “which specific countries” would be a part of the announced deal.
“I am not privy to talk about that,” the secretary said.
Late last week, in the run-up to the Labor Day weekend, the president was pressed on the same point yet again, and this time he elaborated — but only a little.
The Republican said the meat would come from Argentina and Brazil, before adding, “It’s coming from a couple of other places,” which he still wouldn’t identify.
It was at about this point that some critics started referring to the plan as Trump’s “mystery meat” policy.
The line of inquiry is more than just a matter of curiosity. In an op-ed for The New York Times, author Eric Schlosser explained, “If American consumers knew where that beef was coming from, they might not want to eat it.” From his opinion piece:
The cuts of meat covered by Mr. Trump’s proclamation aren’t fresh sirloins, rib-eyes and filets. They’re lean beef trimmings that will be added to fattier American cuts to make ground beef. They’re small chunks of frozen meat that could have been kept in cold storage overseas for years. They are the quintessence of generic industrial meat, imported here to be subsequently processed in massive grinders that combine pieces of tens of thousands of cattle from multiple countries, mainly into fast food hamburgers.
As for Brazil, one of the two countries that Trump was willing to specifically identify, Schlosser added, “One of the worst food-safety scandals occurred in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of beef. In 2017, the Brazilian federal police raided nearly 200 meatpacking plants after allegations that government inspectors and politicians were being bribed to allow the sale of contaminated beef. Rotten meat treated with ascorbic acid and other chemicals to mask the contamination had been sold to hospitals and schools in Brazil and also exported. Executives at the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world, later admitted to bribing inspectors.”
On Sept. 1, three days before the American president said some of the beef he would import would come from Brazil, the European Union announced that it was suspending meat imports from Brazil after the South American country “failed to guarantee its compliance with EU rules on the use of antimicrobial substances.”
The more the White House is pressed for more answers on this, the better.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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