Where's the Beef: In Argentina or America? — Free the People with Matt Kibbe (Ep. 356)

Name: Where's the Beef: In Argentina or America? — Free the People with Matt Kibbe (Ep. 356)
Uploaded: 2025-10-24
Duration: 57 min 44 s
Description: Massie the cattle farmer on the Trump administration's plan to import Argentine beef to ease grocery prices, and what it says about domestic agricultural policy. Long-form Kibbe interview.

Oct 24, 2025 · 57:44 matt-kibbe agriculture spending argentina

Massie the cattle farmer on the Trump administration's plan to import Argentine beef to ease grocery prices, and what it says about domestic agricultural policy. Long-form Kibbe interview.

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Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty this week a marathon conversation with Congressman Thomas Massie because the house is shut down the government is shut down he has
some time to talk about one of his favorite subjects the beef industrial complex and what the government could do to free up American
cattle producers to put better beef on your table instead of just importing from Argentina. Be sure to stay tuned
for the second episode where we're going to get into Gaza Epstein and the coalition of people trying to take out
Congressman Massie. Check it out. [Music]
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty.
Congressman good to see you again. Good to see you Matt. We got to stop doing this. Yeah. Um but the reason you're here today is because the government has
now been shut down for 21 22 days. Mhm. Um has anyone noticed? Mhm.
Not too many people have noticed. I mean they're so far they've figured out ways to pay um a lot of the folks who otherwise
wouldn't get paid. I think when we hit that next paycheck which is at the end of this month which would be you know day 30 or 31 I think it'll get more
real. Yeah cuz certain things kick in and it starts to hurt. Yeah. But I don't want to talk about that now but I'm I'm sort of happy about the government
shutdown I'm in as a libertarian I should always be happy when the government's not functioning properly. But uh because it's not working you're
available to have a conversation which is which is pretty cool. We've been trying to do this for a while and I thought since you are available we should do like a marathon. We're going
to solve all the problems Okay. >> in one sitting. Which and there's a lot of problems. I don't know if you've noticed um but the and and we'll do this as a
two-part thing and I want to get into to foreign policy and and your your reelect and some of the people that you've pissed off um but but right now let's
talk about something that we could do that's positive um freeing American beef and freeing American cattle producers and this this is all been triggered it's
hot news right now because President Trump has said as part of his efforts to to help slash bailout Javier Milei in
Argentina he wants us to import more Argentinian beef. And your response was well what about American beef?
>> Yeah. What about American beef? Well I think the president is trying to kill two birds with one stone. He's trying to bail out Argentina but he's also trying
to do something about the inflation that we're seeing at the supermarket. And so uh you know if you have a dollar that
you made four years ago that dollar is worth 20 cents less today. And it's even more so the fact if you're going to the
store and trying to buy beef cuz beef prices are going up. So the president said hey we'll just bring in all this beef from Argentina that'll solve
Argentina's problems and then that'll solve the prices at the supermarket. The problem with that is it's it's not
enough revenue to solve Argentina's problems. They're talking about a $40 billion bailout down there. Um and in the supermarkets it may be a
quick fix but it's not going to work long term because the problem is is a lot deeper than that. You have a a lot of cattle farms that have gone out of
business and you have a lot of local processors that process the beef that've been consolidated into one of four big meat processing companies that control
85% of the market. So that's something you know we should dive into I think is why is beef so high? But first of all to
address your question that the president's proposal isn't going to solve the problem long term either of the two problems that he's trying to solve unfortunately. By the way my
I know you're here to grill me but my beef is not with the president it's with his policy. Right right that nice nice cuz I I I sent out a um an X post asking
people who should I talk to about solving the problem of escalating beef prices cuz I'm I I like steak. Mhm.
And as far as I can tell the price of a steak at Costco and I I buy the whole side.
And I I know you you farm local guys don't appreciate that I buy my steak at Costco but it's a it's a price point for me. Um and I'm I'm sure the the price of
uh uh prime rib has doubled. By the way if we should disclose at this point that you did once buy some beef
from me. >> Yes. That may or may not have been stamped by the USDA. And may or may not have been illegally run across state lines. It's all right. And may or may
not have been grilled and delicious on on my very own grill. And and I but this is kind of the point I would rather buy that beef. Right. But
right now it's hard to do unless you're willing to have an illicit transaction according to the federal government. It's hard to buy directly from farmers.
But that that gets to what the actual solution is here. So um you have the the number of cattle in the United
States is at an all-time low since it's never it's not been this low since the 1960s. And
um cattle are cyclical the price of cattle and I'm talking about the price at the farm. Now the price at the farm isn't always the price at the supermarket.
There are things that get in between that like the price of corn and the price of soybeans which are two of the things that are fed to cattle um to finish them if you're buying them at
Costco. If you're buying them from me it's grass that they're finished on but >> I know. I won't I won't you know We can argue about that in a minute.
>> I won't poke you too much on that one. But um and I would never steer you wrong. Sorry.
So you know cattle inventories are at an >> You're powering me into submission. Cat- don't be bullied though. Uh cattle inventories are all-time low and
they're and they're going down and here's why. Um it's it's hard to turn on a dime uh the the amount of cattle that are in
the United States and it as um contrast with poultry. So a chicken if
you want to have meat in the supermarket you have to plan eight weeks in advance. From the time the the egg is laid until
that bird is butchered and goes to freezer camp we call it uh is eight weeks. Now for for a hog it's on the order of months it's a few months
between the time the sow has the you know the hog the piglets or whatever and then you butcher the hog. For cattle it's about two years sometimes longer
than that between when the calf is born and when it's butchered. And also with cattle they haven't been mechanized and
industrialized in a way that chickens have. You need one cow to have one calf right? They they may occasionally have a
twin but that's a very rare occurrence. Whereas with hogs they they have a whole litter. I I don't raise hogs so I don't know what they're called maybe it's not
a litter but um and with you know with birds you can a chicken can lay an egg every day. So
and with a cow the gestation period is almost identical to humans. So the most that the most
steers or calves beef animals that one cow one adult grown female cow can produce in a year is one. And when that calf is born it can go to
two different streams. It can and I'm I'm not talking about dairy cattle they're different breed here and there is some overlap like if you uh if a
dairy cow is fully depreciated and not producing as much milk she will go into the beef supply. So there's a little bit of connection there but not a
whole lot. So when a cow on your farm has that one year event has that calf um that calf can either go into
beef into the pipeline where it goes to usually a feed lot if you're getting it from Costco uh or it can stay on the
farm if it's a female. The so it so this only works for half of the animals that are born once a year to a cow
they would have a female calf and that that one can go either to Costco or it can stay on the farm and have its own
calf. But again that's going to take like that heifer's going to be almost two years old before you breed her and then in the third year she will have
that calf. So you can see this is like an aircraft carrier when you have a herd on a farm it's not like you you decide how many eggs to hatch this month and
then two months from now you'll have that much chicken. This is on the order of two or three years to steer this. Okay. >> By by the way I have to pull this out,
but sometime in 2020 when you and I were doing all those shows on lockdowns, Mhm. um you were always sort of playing the
role of Nostradamus, Yes. where you literally predicted precisely this problem with lockdowns. Yeah, I'm getting goosebumps because I remember
that. I was pointing out that the supply chain for some foods is 3 years long and that what we were doing during COVID, in terms of planting an apple
tree, it's going to take 3 or 4 years for that sometimes 5 or 6 years for that apple tree to bear fruit, and if during COVID you're paying people to stay home
and not plant apple trees, you're affecting the price of apples 5 years from now. The same thing when you slaughter the dairy herd because they didn't have the facility school was
closed and they couldn't redirect that milk because it was in cartons for school children, not for moms at the supermarket, so they destroyed dairy
cattle, which were going to take 2 or 3 years to build back up. And so you had a lot of weird things going on during COVID and we're still seeing the tail of
that, no pun intended, um right now. So, uh back to back to the beef, um it's So,
here's what happens when the price that the farmer sees of beef cattle goes up. So, there's there's kind of two kinds of
cattlemen. There are the the brood stockers, the ones that have the mama cows, and they typically don't finish
the calves. They they might sell them at 1 year old and ship them to another type of farmer that feeds them for a year or
6 months and to get them up to weight in order to butcher. So, but so I'll be talking about the the cow-calf operator. That's the ones that
raise keep the cows and um and then have the calves. Well, when a cow-calf operator, and they're the ones who are faced with this
decision, not the feedlot. The feedlot gets a heifer or steer and they don't breed them. They once they get to the feedlot, they're going to Costco, okay?
Um the the cow-calf operator, when the price of beef gets high, has that decision to make every year with the new heifers. Am I going to sell it to the
feedlot or am I going to keep it on my farm? Well, when the price of of uh that the feedlot is willing to pay goes up,
the the farmer who keeps the brood cows is more incentivized, at least in the near term, to sell them to the feedlot.
So, let's say a farmer can get $1,000 um typically in a year for a heifer, he might say, "Well, I'm just going to keep
that heifer and make her into a brood cow." But, if that price goes to two or even $3,000, the farmer would almost have to be
insane to keep that and try for another couple years and try to turn it into a brood cow. So, it is cyclical. What happens is when
the price that the farmer sees of cattle goes up, the farmer sells more of his inventory. He may even take that
8-year-old cow who was 2 months late having her calf this year, and so she's not as productive as the other cows in
the herd, he may say, "You're going to be hamburger." And so, not only do you have the the new heifers going into the food stream, you have the
cull cows being culled at a at an earlier age, so the capacity to produce beef goes down when the price of cattle
goes up. And this continues and continues um it until it it gets so out of whack that
somebody says, "You know what? I'm going to pay $4,000 for a 1-year-old heifer and and 3 years from now, I'll be in the
cattle business because I think this is going to continue." And so, but we're it's So, it's a cyclical thing and we're in the longest
cycle that we've ever seen in the United States. It's been It's been going up for I think over a decade now and inventories have been going down.
And part of that is because the government's making it harder to raise cattle and to get them processed, and also another part of that is it's just
not as profitable now. And And again, this is where the imports come into play. You got if if the president makes
it less profitable to be a cattle farmer because he's somehow I I don't know what his plan is, but he's proposed to buy more beef from
Argentina, which means he's planning to do something that's not free market. He's planning to incentivize beef purchases from Argentina, I think.
Um if he if he does that, he's going to disincentivize the the young farmer or the would-be farmer in the United States who's in his 20s and thinking about
taking over the family farm, are we going to divide this farm into a subdivision or or will we keep uh raising cattle here? And if he sees a
bunch of beef coming from Argentina right when prices would be high to the farmer and incentivize him to get into the
business, he may not get into the business. So, that will perpetuate the problem. I saw somebody you'll like this as a free market
libertarian, somebody on the internet yesterday said that high prices of cattle solve the problem
of high prices of cattle. Like, eventually more people get into the market when the price goes up, right? So, there you have it. That's why
it's cyclical. Um that is why right now cattle prices are high. There's another There's another factor in here that I don't do
the um the feedlot thing. I don't feed my animals grain. I do finish some of my steers and heifers and sell them locally
as grass-fed, but there's another dynamic that's kind of strange. Um when the price of uh corn and soybeans
goes down for other market reasons, the demand for those 1-year-old calves
goes up because the people who have corn want something to do with their corn and instead of making ethanol with it, they
may make beef with it. And and so, it's it's kind of weird um how this happens. When the price of
corn goes up, the price that the cow-calf operator sees for a calf goes down. Because what's happened, the the overall
price at the supermarket of beef went up because corn is such a large component of it, and so then consumer demand went down, and then there's less demand for
calves to go to the feedlot. So, it's it's a little it's not that complicated, but at first blush it's not intuitive,
and this is why you get into these cycles, and this is why right now the last thing in the world you want to do is artificially bring down the price of
cattle in the United States because that's what's should eventually get more people to raise cattle. And
part of there's there's two things legislative uh answers that I have here to the problem.
One of them is, and you may not consider this to be very libertarian, I think we should bring back country of origin labeling. And so, there's two stages you
could do that in. You could either um have mandatory country of origin labeling where And when we used to have this until 2015 and the WTO, World Trade
Organization, said that United States was violating uh GATT, General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, because we were requiring beef that was
raised outside the United States to be labeled differently. The argument, this is a really bizarre argument that they used to say we were discriminating against foreign beef when we put the
label on it, was that it would require the feedlot to have another set of pens for the uh the animals from Mexico and
Canada that they were going to feed out. And that that would because ultimately you're going to have to label that beef
separately if the animal was born you know, outside of the United States, so to label it separately, you have to keep track of it separately, and to do that
costs money. So, they said, "We're imposing a cost on animals from Canada and Mexico that animals in the United States don't have." And so, the WTO
said, "You got to get rid of your country of origin labels in the United States." And basically they told Congress to jump and Congress said, "How
high?" And um I think it was all but eight Republicans voted to get rid of country of origin labeling. Um
and I was one of those eight that said, "No, let's keep it." Because if and here's here's my conspiracy theory, that it
wasn't really Canada and Mexico that were inspired to bring this lawsuit against the United States. I think it was the meatpackers
because they realized if they could buy calves cheaper, they could make and sell the beef at the same price at the supermarket, they
would you know, they would or calves or animals, fed out animals, and sell it at the supermarket. By the way, the label would still say USDA.
Most people go to the supermarket, US Department of Agriculture, well, that must be from the United States, right? So, the I think the meatpackers put
Canada and Mexico up to bringing put them up to bringing this lawsuit and then persisted all those years until
we eventually lost. Now, I think we're sovereign country. Those judges at the WTO are not in my copy of the Constitution. I mean, the
Supreme Court is supposed to be the Supreme Court. There's not supposed to be a court more supreme than the Supreme Court. Yet, that's what the WTO pretends
to be. And this is I remember President Trump's first inaugural speech. I was there listening to it and so inspired that he
was he was just telling the WTO to get lost. Like, we were going to put America first and and do what was good for America.
And that was, you know, 20 17 January 2017. And I was so excited cuz in in 2015 is
when we had lost country of origin labeling, but we never brought it back. By the way, and I won't go on too much about country of origin labeling, but to complete
this, I said there's two stages of labeling you can have. You can either have mandatory country of origin labeling or you could have volunteer
or you could have you know, discretionary country of origin labeling, but have some rules around it. You can't bring an animal
from Mexico, you know, a day before you're going to butcher it, take the hide off of it, cut it up, and call it USA beef because it was
butchered in the United States, right? That's the sort of thing you would want to avoid, but you can't really avoid unless you have some sort of rules around the the labeling.
And so, and states could implement those rules, but then the federal government would probably say, "Oh, you can't do that." So, it's really up to the federal government. So, when they
in 2015, I went to the Rules Committee and offered an amendment to the bill that was going to repeal mandatory country of origin labeling labeling and
I offered a voluntary country of origin labeling uh guidelines that the federal government would put in place.
And they wouldn't even let me have a vote on that amendment. And ironically, the voluntary country of origin labeling was uh
a Paul Ryan bill originally and he was the speaker who wouldn't allow the vote on it. If on his if I'm remembering it
correctly or, you know, it was it was a bunch of the people who were chairman and in charge who had drafted the legislation that I offered as an
amendment when they got rid of mandatory country of origin labeling. Here's why um you want labeling. If the US farmer can't differentiate a
superior product from what is probably an inferior product. Now, there may be Kobe beef that's even better uh you
know, or brings a higher price. You can be damn sure they're going to label that Kobe beef, right? From Japan or whatever.
Uh but I've bought that at the Costco, too. Sorry. And that was probably from Australia cuz they're the biggest
ranchers for Wagyu cattle, which are the the cattle that are um raised in Japan in the Kobe Prefecture.
This is Now, we're getting into some other area where if you call it Kobe and it's not from the Kobe Prefecture, that's like calling your Virginia
whiskey bourbon and it's not from Kentucky. Like which is a whole 'nother set of of labeling stuff. But the reason you country of origin
labeling would help US farmers is because there are customers who when they go to the supermarket if there's steaks and they're not labeled, they
will still buy the steak. Um and they're not they're probably not going to go up to the cashier at Kroger's and demand to know, you know,
get your get your butcher out here. I want to know where this beef came from. There's no label on it, right? It's a little inconvenient when you're trying to get ready for the Little League picnic and
cook hamburgers or whatever. Um so but if they go to the supermarket and there's one that says USA beef and
there's one that says product of Argentina, well, then they may put a higher premium on the USA beef because maybe they trust
our farmers. Um maybe they want to help our farmers. Maybe they know it's probably likely to be more fresh if it's from the United
States instead of having shipped from somewhere else. You would almost all that would have to be frozen to get here if you're shipping it from overseas or outside of the country.
But that would help farmers, country of origin labeling. And when when they in 2015, by the way, I told you we're in about a 10-year cycle of cattle prices
going up. They in 2015 is when they dropped. Because for for American farmers, cattle
prices went down. They could no longer differentiate their product. The meat packers could buy Mexican and Canadian
animals and butcher those and slap the USDA sticker on them. So, demand for US uh calves, you know, stalkers, one
one-year-old, whatever, eight months old went down. But since then, they've been ticking up. >> I remember those. Those were the the the
salad days, so to speak, because I was buying grass-fed beef from Whole Foods Yeah. instead of mystery beef from Costco.
Um so, I was I was just loving it. >> old days, if you're a consumer, but they didn't last very long because what happened is a lot of cattle farmers went out of business in the United States.
And they said, "This isn't worth it. We're we're losing dozens of cattle farmers every month." Yeah. If you've made it this far into
the show, it means I must be doing something right. Kibbe on Liberty is just one of the amazing products we created for the people. We tell
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And if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org. Now, back to the show.
This business cycle. I want to I would just go back to the to this business cycle where it fluctuates and this this is a classic problem in farming
generally um as I understand it, but it as as a libertarian who's skeptical about about regulatory capture and and
the big beef industrial complex. I don't know much about them, but I know they're there and I know they're screwing up everything. How much of it is
government mucking around with prices or barriers to entry or regulatory requirements and and we'll get into your prime act, but
but what else is going on there? You know, the the cattle industry, I'm a farmer, by the way. I think we've already disclosed this. A cattle farmer.
I don't have very many cattle. Um they're like maybe 50 million cattle in the United States and I own 50 of them. So, when people say you're self-dealing,
I say, "Well, I get 1 millionth of the benefit of whatever this bill does." If you don't count pork and lamb, which I don't raise, right? So, I must
be the the most inefficient self-dealer in the world. I've also yet to really make money on my cattle. Uh I haven't yet paid off the investment in
the hay equipment, the fences, um the land, the barns, the squeeze chute, the corral gates,
um the hay rings, you know, I still haven't paid for all that stuff yet. The truck to pull the trailer >> And you've been doing this for what, about a decade? Two decades. 2003 is
when I first bought cattle. And so, I've been doing it What is that? 22 years. So, the return on investment, at least for you, when it comes to
cattle farming, is not great. No. But full disclosure, this could be the first year I make money.
Because we're in that cycle. We're at that point where although Your political opponents are going to clip that Oh, I know. and put it in an attack.
>> Although so, I could make money if I sold a bunch of my herd, but there's also an aspect
of gambling in farming where you where you say, "You know what? This could keep up for a few years." So, instead of selling my heifers to the meat packers
or to Matt Kibbe after I raised them on grass, maybe I should keep them and double the size of my herd over the next couple years.
Maybe even lease some of the neighbor's farm or buy hay from somewhere else and pasture more of my land um instead of raising it in hay. It's
so, you know, there's a a decision to make here. So, the reality is I probably won't make money this year on my farm, either. Um maybe the cattle part of it will make
money. Okay. So, back to the thing on what what is government doing that's meddling with it and is there regulatory capture? Yes,
this is my second legislative solution. So, in 2015, I told you country of origin labeling went away cuz my colleagues were scared of the
World Trade Organization and or got donations from the meat packers and and or the National Cattlemen's Beef Association sold out the farmers and or
Farm Bureau sold out the farmers. And uh anyways, in 2015 it was pretty dire year for cattlemen.
So you're saying there was a herd mentality? Yes. In the establishment. So I was prodded
to do something legislatively that and what I recognized was this problem that we still have four meat packers
controlled 85% of the meat process in the United States. One of them's owned by China. That's that's Smithfield. They do mostly pork. And and the other is owned by
Brazil. And that's they're trying to get listed I think on one of our stock exchanges to to kind of legitimize it but they're they're
Brazilian company completely and it's called JBS. And they and they've got facilities both of those have facilities in Kentucky. Right? So I'm kind of step
stepping on some toes here. Um to talk about them. >> PAC contributions to you. No, I don't I don't get I don't the the actual cattlemen's beef association has
boycotted any donations to me. Um and it which is ironic because like I'm for the cattlemen in Kentucky.
The problem is they mostly represent the meat packers in my opinion. Although temporarily right now in order to keep their membership happy they are taking
the side of farmers and ranchers on this Argentina issue I've noticed. But I'm not sure how sincere that is
and how long that will last. But once they what they would probably be okay with is instead of bringing in Argentina beef
if we brought in Argentina cattle and let the meat processors make their money on that then the cattlemen beef association will the lobbyists, that's
who I'm talking about, will be okay with it cuz they'll get their cut. But but right now what the president's proposing is not to bring the cattle here and let
the processors make money on it but to bring the beef here. Okay. So and I think that's what he's proposing. So the there's the four meat
packers that control 85% of the the meat processed in the United States. And if you want to start your own little processing company
you know this looks like a great little facility here for it. And you know locally you have to comply
with all of the same regulations that the Oscar Mayer Wiener factory has to comply with which means the size of the floor drain has to be 6 in,
you know, you have to have separate bathrooms and offices for the federal government employees who will be in your building
sniffing and poking the carcass. Um that's by the way that's how they determine if it's safe or not. Does it smell good and how does it poke? Um
the that's how the government determines it. >> Joel Joel Salatin went through this explicitly because he wanted to process beef on Polyface. Yeah, so Joel Salatin
is part owner in a federal federal licensed inspected facility um so that he can sell by the cut legally. He's big
enough now he has to do it by the law. Um And so right now there are small custom house >> he was an anarchist.
Well, I'm not going to out him. I'm I'm not saying he's completely compliant. I go to his farm at least once a year and speak at something
called the Rogue Food Conference and you'll not see that posted. Like I've spoken like five Rogue Food Conferences and never made a social
media post so it's not always it's not always at his farm. Usually it's actually somewhere else but he's usually there. But by the way when I wanted to
talk to somebody I I asked on X I would never finish this thought. I wanted to talk to somebody about the high cost of beef and what free market solutions we
could push to fix the problem. Everyone that didn't say Thomas Massie said Joel Salatin. Mhm. So
you guys are sort of the OG even though he's more a little more OG than you. Well this morning at like 4:00 a.m. I woke up thinking about this problem and
I Of course you did. And I I found a video I didn't know Joel Salatin had made. It's like a 12 minute video promoting the PRIME Act.
And so I posted that on social media. I mean I can't believe I didn't know it was out there. He did he did a really good job of explaining it. I won't do as
well even though it's my legislation but I'll I'll try to explain how it addresses the regulatory capture. So right now there exists a loophole
that allows me to sell beef using a custom facility that doesn't have a USDA inspector.
And that loophole says that people are allowed to butcher their own animals. So if I wanted to legally sell you meat
I could do it by selling you the the animal itself take it to the processor tell them this
is Matt Kibbe's animal and he wants his T-bones 2 in thick. He he wants his stew meat. He you know he
wants the the arm roast ground into hamburger. He wants to keep the chuck roast. But you got to buy all those cuts even
though I know you like steak. You got you're even going to go home with the liver. Okay. I just want the ribeyes. That's all I want.
Well maybe we can work something out and I'll take the other cuts. Um but there's a loophole that says Matt Kibbe's allowed to butcher his own
animal or pay somebody to butcher his own animal. I would I would guess probably a million families in the United States use this loophole. Not not 100 million families
but a million families. The the families who have enough money in in their bank account that they can spend 800 or $1,000 to buy a quarter of
an animal. So Matt Kibbe can be partners with you know up to three other families so that instead of paying $4,000 for the
meat you're paying $1,000 for the meat. But you have to have the means not only to pay $1,000 for meat but to store it
at your house in a freezer and hope that the power doesn't go off for more than two days or now you've lost your $1,000 investment. Um and you have to be willing to eat all
the cuts that you don't typically buy which is pretty inefficient. I mean this is the great thing about a supermarket or Costco is if you just want to buy
ribeye you can go buy there you can go buy the ribeye out of 10 animals, right? And let somebody else buy the hamburger. Well that's not the deal you get if
you're using this loophole. Okay, so because this loophole exists and because hundreds of thousands maybe a million
families use this loophole to buy beef directly from a farmer custom slaughterhouses do exist. They also process for instance wild game
like deer or elk when when a hunter gets that typically a custom house will do that cuz that's your animal too. You're allowed to eat the animal you kill
and pay somebody else to process it for you. Okay, so there's um there's like this dual path for for
meat. It can either go to a custom slaughterhouse or it can go to a USDA facility. Well all of the small USDA facilities because there's overhead associated with them a
lot of those have consolidated and JBS and and places like Smithfield buy those facilities
maybe buy them and shut them down. Uh just they don't have to compete with them. Or buy them and use them and then
so what's happened is the average size of a USDA facility keeps getting bigger and bigger. That was the problem during COVID. Like you got all these workers in
there who may also be staying in dormitories and during COVID it went went through the cruise ships, the nursing homes and the meat packing
facilities the quickest. COVID did and they shut down. And that's why you had animals being euthanized during COVID instead of being processed.
Uh there was some enterprising people from my county who drove up to Ohio and they were buying hogs for 50 bucks and bringing them home and getting the job done.
Um because those hogs were going to go into a a wood chipper literally. They're going to be euthanized and it would cost more to dispose of the animal and people say
well why don't why wouldn't the farmer just keep the hog until COVID was over? Well, these animals are bred for production and you know at four months
they're a certain size and at and a hog a year old hog is already geriatric and having like it's obese, it's not able to walk
and it's just not humane to keep an animal that's designed to gain weight so quickly to try to keep that animal around. It's also they also quit producing more meat and they just start
producing fat and you still got to feed them and you're getting nothing for it other than feces which is another problem. And if you're going to keep
staying business the supermarket wants one that's a few months old. So you got to make room for those. Anyways.
All right, so you got the dual path and here's the problem with the dual path. I can't sell you a ribeye using my local processor.
Cuz I got to sell you half the animal. Now you know millions of people are eating these animals half at a time.
They're not getting sick. They wouldn't get sick eating the ribeye if they're eating the liver, the ribeye, the roast, and the hamburger, and what
what's the problem with just selling a rib eye? So, um my Prime Act says that if you're not involved in interstate commerce, if
you're only having an animal uh processed at a local facility, and you don't plan to sell it in interstate
commerce, i.e., the farmers in Kentucky, the processors in Kentucky, and the transaction happens in Kentucky, the customer's in Kentucky.
Um you could uh sell rib eyes in a restaurant, you could sell them in a grocery store, or you could sell them directly to the
consumer, if you're a farmer. And with the one that I always like, the objection I always hear is "Oh my gosh, imagine the liability to
the farmer in that situation." Yeah, wouldn't it be wonderful? Like, you know, the farmer is motivated to produce
a healthy animal because the consumer is going to know who raised it. And the consumer is motivated to know who's raising it. And most of the farmers I
know will gladly take on that liability because what the USDA is doing, when you go through that other path, they're laundering the liability. And they're
using the imprimatur of the government. So, good luck suing anybody if you go to Jack in the Box and get sick,
good luck finding out who made you sick. And and getting, you know, some compensation for that because it's kind of like background checks on guns.
Those those are, in my opinion, there to protect protect the manufacturers, so the manufacturer can say, "Well, I didn't sell a psycho a gun." Um the
government sold it to him. The government approved the transaction. It's the same thing with the USDA. But the but the farmers would have the choice of assuming that liability
because they could You could still sell >> system. Yeah, you could still go into the existing system. And by way, if if there is degree of liability, you
already have it now when you're selling half an animal or whole animal to a customer. Um and so farmers would gladly accept that.
Uh by the way, it's not even illegal for me to use a custom slaughterhouse to get hamburger made and and give it away at a Little League game in the form of cooked
hamburgers, right? The USDA doesn't care. They only It only becomes illegal when you make when you charge a penny
for it. Now, the USDA wants involved. And so, it is regulatory capture. The big guys, the more regulation, the
better for them because it's keeping the little guys out. And so, my Prime Act gets around that. My Prime Act has a a few other nice features.
Uh it doesn't have a numerical limit. The By the way, there is a you can raise poultry and sell, I think
it's up to 20,000 birds or 10,000 birds without um without going through the USDA if your
state allows it. And there's that exemption is written into the the federal code. There's no such exemption for cattle or pork.
And I contemplated putting a numerical exemption in there, but then I thought about Obamacare, which said if you have more than 50 employees, you got to do
this. And that What that did is it kept small companies small. And if you're succeeding in producing healthy food,
why would I want you to hit a barrier and then try to come up with ways to to get around that barrier that are very costly?
So, the better limitation is that, and this is the constitutional aspect of it, it's the federal government, in my opinion, and
in the opinion of our founders, had no authority to regulate intrastate commerce within the state. And that is
what the bill facilitates is intrastate commerce. If my bill is, in a way, constitutionally redundant. I'm just saying the feds have no authority to
regulate the transaction if it stays inside the state. And I'm not getting too crazy with that and trying to reassert the the Constitution for
everybody. I'm just saying, "All right, well, for the purpose of beef and pork and lamb and goat, this we're going to adhere to the Constitution, and the regulations will be at the state or
local level." And if you think this is too radical, uh you better not go to Kroger's or supermarket or Costco or to uh or to a
restaurant even tonight to a steakhouse. There are steakhouses here in Washington, D.C. that cut up way more meat than any of these small in a night
in one night than a small custom facility does in a day. So, um the level of regulation that's appropriate, I
believe, is the level of regulation right now, which is you may be subject to a surprise inspection, or uh your state may require inspecting you once a
year, once every 6 months, or maybe your health department, the same people that go and inspect restaurants and supermarkets that are cutting up meat
behind the counter, that you can use that same inspection regime and know that it's safe.
So, this uh I don't quite get like the the liability argument feels pretty lame to me, and I'm wondering what the
uh meat processing industrial complex, what what are their most potent arguments against you? And is it Do they have credible arguments, or do they just write checks to so many members of
Congress that it's hard to get something like this done? Mm, they um I I don't I mean, you're asking me to
argue against my own bill. >> Well, I assume they make safety arguments. They do. They try to make safety arguments, and so let me rebut this. They'll they say,
"Well, oh my gosh, you got to be kidding me. You're going to let somebody buy beef straight from the farmer without the federal government making sure it's safe?" Well, my answer to that is is
twofold. Number one, all of the big recalls that you see for E. coli, where they have to recall by lot number, and
they and they don't even actually know which meat is tainted cuz they process so much that day in that lot, they may recall 100,000 lbs of beef, those are
from their facilities. They're the ones who are getting people sick. And if you've FOIA, this has been done, if you FOIA the USDA and say, "How many cases
are you aware of somebody getting sick from a a custom facility that's not USDA inspected?" Their answer is, "We have no record of that."
Like, there's literally no record of it at the federal government. If you try to FOIA, "Did somebody ever get sick from the the local place where they're
selling a half or a whole animal?" Um The I mean, It's safe. >> There Oh, here's a here's another argument that they make.
Um they say you will get us into a trade war. Because uh in order to buy beef from Mexico, it
has to be USDA inspected, but now you're going to let farmers sell uninspected beef directly to consumers.
And what will happen is, let's say, Canada sues you at the World Trade Organization, and the World Trade Organization authorizes Canada to do
retaliatory tariffs on, say, soybeans. So, what they do is they scare the soybean farmers. This would be like the Farm Bureau's approach. They would say,
uh "Who's in the tank for the meat packers?" But they would say, uh "You're going to, in addition to
saying, 'Oh, one tainted you know, one instance of tainted beef is going to ruin the industry for everybody if you do this and somebody gets hurt.' But they will they will also say that you're
going to you're going to trip off a trade war, and it's going to affect all farmers. Like, Canada will retaliate by or China
will retaliate by tariffing soybeans, and then it'll all go to hell in a handbasket." So, they scare other farmers. But the reality is most cattle
farmers don't make enough money on cattle, if they make money at all, these days. So, they're also doing soybean and corn and other enterprises which rely on
international trade. So, they're particularly vulnerable to this argument. And so, the lobbyists know that. So, that's what they try to say. So, my
answer to that is, number one, you know, we're Are we a sovereign country or not? Okay, that's that's where I start. But
um and I would say we are a sovereign country, and we should If you see what Trump's doing right now with tariffs, like, obviously you can get away with a lot.
And the least of our worries, this is what they also said for the country of origin labeling, that if it violated trade laws, and it would have started a trade war if
we didn't comply and take all the the country of origin labeling requirements off of our food. I would say, "Well, how come we haven't
started trade war over the 20,000 bird exemption for chickens? How come we there's no trade war
uh because we require seafood to be labeled? Um How come there's no trade war because
probably a million families a year are using this other loophole to buy beef from local farmers through a custom slaughterhouse? Like, I'm not buying
their argument about that." But there's this thing that we like to say now called America First. Mhm. And it strikes me that it would
sort of make sense. Like, going back to the labeling thing, I would rather buy local beef. Mhm. And and for me it would be a quality thing
and I'd I'd like to know where the beef came from. I have no idea where that that slab of ribeye is I buy at Costco came from and I'm hoping it's US, I
don't know, but um it strikes me that uh this president and this Congress has has at least
rhetorically embraced the idea of America First. So, why would it be controversial to put American cattle farmers first?
It shouldn't be. And that's what I'm saying like food like it's like to label the country of origin is literally it's not even may putting America first,
it's putting us on a playing field where you can decide in the supermarket if you're America First or not, right? Like, today we don't even have the ability for an individual to put America
First when they buy beef and pork. By the way, you're the the country of origin label for this microphone exists,
right? For the glasses that you're wearing, for the the jacket that I have on, the country of origin is labeled.
For the boots that I'm wearing. Uh we've What I'm asking for is not so radical to put America First by having a label on
the beef and the pork. Yeah, I'd I'd like to know as someone that that like if there's quality and price competition between American beef, between local beef, and
Argentinian beef. Uh and Argentina is a very beef-centric country, which is something I love about it. Um not a lot of vegans in Argentina.
Um but I'd like I'd like to know as a consumer, I don't think that violates uh libertarian principles. I'm sure there's good ways and bad ways to mhm encourage
uh uh transparency. But, you know, and consumers could demand like so what is this? This because beef is not beef is not beef.
Like, your your grass-finished uh beef on your farm is very different than what I'm getting at Costco and it's not unfair to to know. Right. Um and here's
the other thing that's happening. I many years ago I I got into organic kick. Before I realized by the way
local is better than organic. Uh once I got into organic and thought about raising cattle organically and looked at
some of the requirements which just seemed to be ridiculous and then some of the exceptions they they let you put two uh amino acids
that are manufactured in a factory into organic chicken feed. Methionine and lysine I think or something. Anyways, they you could put
that in organic chicken feed and there's other things you can use uh GMO corn and stuff like it's you can launder certain things that wouldn't be
considered organic or things that you wouldn't want to have you could still you can still end up calling them organic. But, when I went down the organic kick and by the
way organic's probably better than nothing, okay? As far as the label goes. There there are some requirements there. I was in supermarket with my wife and
I'm like, let's get this it's organic. Let's get this. Oh, she bought she pulled some apple juice and put it in the cart. I'm like, oh, that's not organic and I put it back on the shelf
and I found one that had the organic sticker and I put it in the cart. And as we're going down the aisle I I picked the the apple juice up and I start looking at it it says product of Turkey.
Like, wait, and number one, don't we raise apples in the United States? Um why does this have to be product of Turkey? And number two,
do I trust the USDA in inspector designees in Turkey? Mhm. To like cuz you know we're not sending USDA
employees to Turkey. They're like or even compliance officers, it's got to be something that's been no pun intended farmed out
to the Turkish people. And there are a lot of these countries where just a $100 bill in your hand, you know, quietly passed is is the
equivalent of an inspection. Um Yeah, you might you might get a turkey of a bottle of juice.
That was that was pretty tortured. Yeah, that that didn't work for me, but um Uh So, um well, there's always going to be a
bad apple in the bunch. Uh so anyways, I think the two things just to summarize that would solve the problem we have two
problems that I can't solve Argentina's problem today. But, as far as farmers going out of business and and younger farmers
deciding not to get into the business, there has to be for the cycle to work, for the cycle to rebound, the prices do have to get high at least
for the farmer to see a high price before you will have more farmers or before you will have farmers decide to put more of their land into production.
Um so the two legislative fixes that I have, country of origin labels, which is a mandate, mandatory country of origin
labels, but it's a mandate on the foreign producers who are selling the products into the United States. And I
think it's consti- well, I know it's constitutional that you know, we're allowed to regulate trade. Congress that's one of our authorities. And also to set standards for weights and
measures. Which is basically this is what beef is. Um we could for instance I mean again, the founders weren't complete
libertarians. I think they were pragmatic libertarians. But, they did say that the government can establish standards for weights and measures because that's a helpful thing that
maybe to have 16 oz be a pound every the same 16 oz everywhere. But, also maybe if you're selling something called milk or
something called beef that it has to comply with some or biological definition of those things that's been established. So, one, country of origin
labels would help farmers and would help consumers. Consumers could better differentiate what they're purchasing and farmers in the United States could get a premium for a better product. The
other uh legislative solution I have is the PRIME Act. And this is addressing the issue of regulatory capture. Where the we have scale
prejudicial regulations. We need scale appropriate regulation. And the right scale for a local farmer selling to a local consumer is a local law, not a
federal law. Okay, free the beef is what you're saying. Yes. Yes. So, we're going to we're going to actually do a sep- second episode where it's going to get more
spicy cuz I want to talk about Israel. I want to talk about AIPAC. I want to talk about uh your your your views on foreign policy and why so many people from out
of your state are spending millions of dollars to unelect you. And we might have to talk about the shutdown and Epstein. It all it all is the same thing. It's a it's a
big beautiful mess. All right, stay tuned. Thank you. Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the
video, subscribe, and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about Free the People, go to freethepeople.org.