How the USDA Can Level the Playing Field for American Ranchers

The regulatory imbalances that favor imported beef over domestic production didn't emerge from congressional legislation; they arose from administrative interpretations that have drifted far from the legal standards they're supposed to enforce. With U.S. cattle inventories at their lowest point since 1951, imports exceeding 4.6 billion pounds annually, and retail prices up more than 14% despite this foreign influx, the case for immediate administrative action has never been clearer. Three concrete steps can restore market integrity, strengthen food safety, and level the playing field for American ranchers and all within existing legal authority.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) must enforce Substantial Transformation as the rigorous legal standard it was designed to be. Federal regulations at 9 CFR Part 327 already require imported beef to retain its foreign origin identity unless it undergoes a genuine transformation that creates a new product with a different name, character, or use. Yet for years, FSIS guidance has permitted minimal activities like grinding, slicing, trimming, or repackaging to qualify as "substantial transformation," allowing foreign beef to be relabeled as a domestic product. This interpretation contradicts longstanding customs law and effectively rewrites binding regulations through informal guidance rather than proper rulemaking. By returning to the true legal standard, one that requires meaningful manufacturing rather than mere cosmetics, FSIS can immediately close the loophole that allows imported beef to enter domestic supply chains under false pretenses, suppressing prices and undermining producers who meet strict U.S. standards.

The FSIS must restore robust physical reinspection at ports of entry as standard practice, not an occasional exception. While risk-based inspection frameworks have their place, the shift toward paperwork review and selective sampling has created a two-tiered system where domestic producers face continuous inspection while imported beef flows into commerce with minimal physical examination. Sections 327.5 through 327.7 already grant FSIS authority to increase inspection intensity, detain non-compliant shipments, and require supervised rework, destruction, or re-export where necessary. Recalibrating the risk-based approach to ensure meaningful physical reinspection would restore regulatory parity with domestic producers, strengthen consumer protection, and rebuild confidence in import controls, all without requiring new statutory authority or international negotiations.

Comprehensive administrative reform must proceed alongside antitrust enforcement to address the concentration crisis. President Trump's November 2025 directive launching a DOJ antitrust probe into the Big Four packers, JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and National Beef, and the December 6, 2025, Executive Order addressing price fixing and anti-competitive behavior in the food supply chain make clear that import policy and market concentration are deeply intertwined. Regulatory asymmetries that allow large, vertically integrated packers to import foreign beef, apply token processing, and sell it as a domestic product don't just distort competition; they accelerate consolidation and shield potentially anticompetitive conduct. Closing import enforcement gaps complements the antitrust investigation by preventing foreign-sourced products from undermining the domestic producers the probe aims to protect. Without coordinated action on both fronts, independent ranchers remain squeezed between global supply chains and concentrated market power, and the structural vulnerabilities of America's beef industry will only deepen.

The tools to fix this broken system already exist in law. What's needed is the will to enforce them. By enforcing Substantial Transformation as Congress intended, restoring meaningful reinspection at the border, and coordinating with antitrust authorities to address market concentration, FSIS and USDA can immediately strengthen food safety, protect American producers from regulatory disadvantage, and rebuild the resilience of the domestic beef supply chain. With cattle inventories near historic lows and import dependence rising, the moment for decisive administrative action is now.