Rancher Scott Hayes from Missouri highlighted the challenges facing the beef industry. Hayes, who has been in the ranching business for over two decades, noted that a combination of factors is driving up prices.

“Feed costs have skyrocketed, and the droughts we’ve experienced have severely impacted our pastures,” Hayes explained. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain our herds and produce the quality beef consumers expect.”

According to Hayes, the rising costs of feed and other inputs, coupled with labor shortages, are pushing prices to levels never seen before. The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have further exacerbated these issues, leading to higher prices at the grocery store.

Rancher Shad Sullivan told The Epoch Times that the sharp rise in prices can be attributed to a “withering assault” from regulators and government authorities who have played an outsized role in the unprecedented increase.

“We are seeing prices at an all-time high, and it is getting close to that point when the consumer is going to say, I can’t do this anymore; it’s just too costly,” said Sullivan. “They (officials and regulators) are trying to push these high prices as a new norm where meat is only a treat for the wealthy. That is where they are pushing us, and that is where we are going.”

Consumers are feeling the pinch as the price of beef continues to climb. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicated that beef prices have risen by over 20% in the past year alone. This increase is particularly hard on families who rely on beef as a staple in their diet.

Producers, too, are struggling. Many ranchers are finding it difficult to cover their costs, let alone make a profit. The financial strain is causing some to consider downsizing their operations or exiting the industry altogether.

“We’re doing everything we can to manage costs, but there’s only so much we can do,” Hayes said. “The reality is that these high prices might be the new norm for the foreseeable future.”

The Bill Gates Factor

According to The Epoch Times, the nation’s most prolific farmland owner is Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and an anti-meat activist. By 2023, Mr. Gates claimed he owned about 270,000 acres spread across 18 states.

Gates, an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the USDA, has been vocal about his belief that meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

In a 2021 interview with Technology Review,  Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

Long-Term Consequences

The sustained increase in beef prices could have significant long-term consequences for the industry. Smaller, family-owned ranches are at particular risk, as they often lack the resources to weather prolonged periods of financial strain. This could lead to greater consolidation in the industry, with larger corporate entities gaining more control over beef production.

There are also concerns about the impact on consumer behavior. If prices remain high, more people may turn to alternative sources of protein, such as chicken or plant-based options. This shift could further disrupt the beef market and change consumption patterns in the United States.

Despite these challenges, Hayes remains cautiously optimistic. He believes that with the right support and policies, the industry can adapt and overcome these hurdles.

“We need policies that support ranchers and address the underlying issues driving up costs,” Hayes said. “With the right approach, we can stabilize prices and ensure that consumers continue to have access to high-quality beef.”

As the beef industry navigates these turbulent times, one thing is clear: the days of cheap beef may be behind us. Both producers and consumers will need to adapt to a new reality where high prices are the norm.

Editor’s Note: One of our sponsors, Prepper All-Naturals, delivers all-American Ribeye, NY Strip, Tenderloin, and Sirloin that has a 25-year shelf life. Their current special offers 25% off with promo code “survival25“.

Sound off about this article on the Based Underground Substack.

American cattle rancher Shad Sullivan told The Epoch Times that he fears that the electronic tags will be the end of the small rancher.

“They are going to use it as a taxing mechanism to eventually control the livestock,” Mr. Sullivan said. “In the European Union, they used these measures under the guise of climate change lies to limit the cattle supply, and if they do that here, it will destroy our industry.

“If the tag mandate is implemented it will be the key to open the door to the gas chamber for independent ranching.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who owns livestock, also sounded the alarm that the move could lead to the erosion of the industry.

“The left wants to ban cattle and before you can ban anything you need a registry, you need to know where it’s at and who owns it and that’s why they want to tag cattle,” he said in a March 23 post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “We’ve seen it happen in Europe.”

In a previous post, Mr. Massie wrote that, if passed, the electronic tracking “will be used by the GREEN agenda to limit beef production, and by the corporate meat oligopoly to DOMINATE small ranchers.”

The omnibus bill, which was passed on March 22, combines six essential spending bills into one and includes text that allocates $15 million to “related infrastructure” needed for the program.

The full text of the provision reads: “The agreement directs the Department to continue to provide the tag and related infrastructure needed to comply with the Federal Animal Disease Traceability rule, including no less than $15,000,000 for electronic identification (EID) tags and related infrastructure needed for stakeholders to comply with the proposed rule, ‘Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison,’ should that rule be finalized.”

Since its initial proposal last year, the mandate for electronic ear tags for cattle and bison crossing state lines has stirred controversy, particularly among small ranchers. They fear that the added costs, which large corporate ranchers can absorb, will drive many smaller operations out of business.

Currently, most livestock are tracked using tags that display 11-digit numbers, which are both visible and trackable. On Jan. 19, 2023, the Federal Register published proposed regulations to mandate the inclusion of radio-frequency identification in ear tags. These enhanced tags must be “both visually and electronically readable” to be recognized as official for the interstate movement of cattle and bison.

“Livestock,” under the regulation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; includes all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age and older; all female dairy cattle of any age; all male dairy cattle born after March 11, 2013; cattle and bison of any age used for rodeo or recreational events; and cattle and bison of any age used for shows or exhibitions, according to the proposal.

Since 2003, following the discovery of the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, in the United States, ranchers have been pushed to adopt electronic identification tags for livestock movement. The cattle industry has been gradually advancing toward enhanced traceability rules and technology ever since.

However, the federal mandating of electronic ear tags would place unnecessary and punitive costs on American ranchers while also further raising the price of beef, according to Justin Tupper, president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association.

“It is another example of ridiculous spending,” Mr. Tupper told the Epoch Times. “If they are going to use these funds to hand out free tags to those who would want them then there would be no real harm, but that is not what it looks like they are doing here.

“Instead they are going to give them to the big tag companies to shove down our throat to mandate it, which is an entirely different thing.”

A new mandate on livestock would only add another obstacle to an industry already decimated by regulations and drought.

The beef cattle supply has already dropped to its lowest point in decades, raising the price of beef to another all-time high and renewing concerns over the long-term health of the nation’s farming community. A series of severe droughts, coupled with government policies that continue to favor large, industrial food processors, has reduced the nation’s supply of beef cattle to a level not seen since the early 1950s, according to Mr. Tupper.

Lawmakers slipped the funding for the electronic ear tag infrastructure into a single paragraph in the omnibus bill, which allowed lawmakers to pass legislation without the scrutiny that would normally occur and is another example of the increasingly intrusive role the federal government has in the lives of the independent ranchers, he said.

“Anything that is mandated we are going to push back very hard against,” Mr. Tupper said. “We always have to be aware of who controls the data.

“We are well aware of the fact that data can exert a tremendous amount of control over the nation’s livestock.”

The provision could also be the beginning of the end for the independent American rancher, according to Mr. Sullivan.

“The beef industry is the last bastion of freedom,” he said. “Ranchers across the nation have to stand up. If not, these tags will be the end of the small rancher.”

The devastation is enormous, including at least 120 miles of power lines gone, meaning no more operational electric grid in those areas, as well as huge losses of prairie and grass for cattle to graze – that is, for the cattle that survived the fiery inferno.

“Many cattle’s hooves have been burned and many more will need to be put down,” it was reported. “What an amazing ‘coincidence’ this happened to the beef industry.”

Texas agricultural commissioner Sid Miller confirmed the devastation, which the man in the video below explains marks the largest fire in Texas state history.

“We knew this about three days ago when it hit over a million acres,” he states. “They’re now at a million and a half acres.”

UPDATE On Damage Caused By The Texas Fires

– Cattle feed & Feed Lots burned
– No water the ranchers use for their cattle
– No grass, prairie land for the cattle to graze is gone
– 120 Miles of power lines down/ no grid

Seems The Entire Beef Cattle Industry Just Got Wiped Out… pic.twitter.com/a5nfuBVcdj

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 5, 2024

(Related: You know what else just partially burned to the ground? The San Vicente migrant camp in Darien Gap.)

Texas fire largest in American history

As we reported back in 2022, U.S. food infrastructure has been under attack for some time now. Food factories all across the nation have burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances, and now we have this apparent attack on the U.S. beef industry.

Though Texas is not America’s exclusive provider of beef, the cattle and land that was lost in this massive fire will probably have a noticeable impact on the conventional beef supply.

“The largest fire we’ve ever had in Texas is the largest fire we’ve ever had in the United States,” the man in the above video explains. “It’s almost at 2,000 square miles, one million and a half acres, with preliminary reports stating 3,000 heads of cattle.”

“That number will triple or quadruple before it’s over, especially when we start euthanizing the cattle that have, uh, had their hooves burnt or their udders burnt. We’re going to have to, you know, put a lot of these animals down.”

In addition to the cattle losses, some 500 homes and barns were reported as destroyed along with two fatalities and five firefighter injuries. Keep in mind that these numbers will likely increase in the coming days.

Since most of the water in the fire-affected areas come from wells, the damage is also apparent in terms of loss of stock water.

“Not only is this livestock out of grass, but there’s also no water,” it was explained. “So it is a very desperate situation.”

As all of this is happening, mind you, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing the largest manufacturer of beef due to what she believes is the damaging effect of meat on “climate change.”

“They want to control our food,” tweeted an X account about both the Texas fires and James’ crusade against beef. “Once they do, famine is very much within play.”

Another wrote that there is plenty of money to keep sending to Ukraine, but none to support Texas – and Americans are okay with this?

“I’ll bet the military contractors (i.e., Raytheon) don’t make much money on natural disasters.”

What do you think? Is the U.S. food supply under attack? Learn more at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

• Twitter.com
• NaturalNews.com
• NaturalNews.com

“What’s happening in the beef industry is the same thing that’s happened in the sheep industry,” Mr. Hemmert told The Epoch Times. “America peaked at 51 million sheep; today, we have less than 5 million.

“I’m seeing empty pastures in my area,” he said. “People said ‘to hell with it.’”

Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, spoke to The Epoch Times about the issue.

“The cattle industry is the last frontier; it’s the last segment of the livestock industry that still has a sufficient level of competition to sustain independent producers,” Mr. Bullard said.

With about 5,000 members, R-CALF represents independent cattle ranchers and is fighting to preserve their independence. But they are facing off against a group of only four major buyers for their cows, new federal initiatives that favor the large packing companies, and climate activism that claims cows emit too many greenhouse gasses and must have their numbers reduced.

“The model that they have applied, first to the poultry industry and now to the hog industry, has been extremely successful for the multinational meat packers that want to vertically integrate the entire industry,” Mr. Bullard said, “and that vertical integration kills competition.”

The cash markets that once existed between buyers and sellers in these industries are largely gone, with farmers becoming either employees or working under contract to packing companies.

“Now, if you want to produce hogs, you do so by invitation from an integrator because you have a contract to produce hogs,” Mr. Bullard said. “They’re applying that, unfortunately, very successful model to the cattle industry right now.”

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) has also commented on the issue.

“That’s the example of vertical integration that’s already happened in large part with our pork producers and our poultry producers,” Ms. Hageman told The Epoch Times. “And they want to do exactly the same thing with our ranches. They want to basically make our ranchers nothing but paid employees, and the ranches and the real property would be owned by the big packers.”

South Dakota rancher Brett Kenzy told The Epoch Times that the American rancher is a remnant of a “self-reliant, independent, entrepreneurial, hardworking, religious, multigenerational person that used to be very commonplace.”

Ranchers now worry that having so much of the country’s meat production under the control of a handful of corporations will drive many farmers out of business and leave Americans at the mercy of a few global players.

The Miracle of Cows

“The miracle of the cow is the fact that she has four chambers in her stomach, and she can eat grass, which is carbohydrate, and create protein,” Mr. Kenzy said. “They’re the only animal on earth that can do it that efficiently.

“Beef is the most well-balanced source for human beings in terms of vitamins, minerals and protein,” he said, “but that four-chambered stomach, as they’re running it through, they belch methane.”

These methane emissions have put cows directly in the crosshairs of climate activists. Many of the corporations that control food markets have joined net-zero clubs like Climate Action 100+, which pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions for themselves and their suppliers.

“Rather than just killing off the cattle all at once, this is going to be a controlled implosion of the beef industry,” Mr. Kenzy said. “I think the end goal is ultimately controlling the food supply.”

Cattle ranchers “went through a period from 2015 to 2021 where they could not recover their cost of production,” Mr. Bullard said. “We’ve seen segments of our industry literally drop like flies.”

“Just four decades ago, we had about 1.3 million independent cattle farmers and ranchers that were maintaining mother cow herds and raising calves each year,” Mr. Bullard said. “Due to economic costs, price squeezes, a lack of profitability, and a lack of competition [among buyers], we wiped out 43 percent of them.”

American households have experienced this phenomenon in the form of escalating prices for beef. The average price that American consumers paid for beef increased from $3.89 per pound in January 2020 to $5.10 per pound as of July 2023, according to the Federal Reserve.

“The fact that cattle producers were receiving seriously depressed prices for the cattle, at the same time that consumers were paying super inflated prices for beef in the grocery store, that prompted us to file a national class action suit against the largest four packers that control 85 percent of the fed cattle market,” Mr. Bullard said.

It is only recently that these price increases made their way through to the ranchers that remained in business.

“This year is going to be profitable for the cow-calf man, but for the last six, seven years there has not been profit,” Mr. Hemmert said. “When there’s not profit, it signals to the industry to cut back, quit producing, and there’s been a lot of cow herds that have been sold.”

“It took decimation of the cow-calf industry to make us profitable again,” he said. “That’s kind of sad, right?”

The Problem With Cows

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization asserts that emissions from livestock farms are about seven gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, or about 15 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions (pdf).

“Beef and cattle milk production account for the majority of emissions, respectively contributing 41 and 20 percent of the sector’s emissions,” the U.N. states.

The solution proposed by climate activists is to reduce the production of beef, with a target of 30 percent reduction in cattle herds. Countries like Ireland and the Netherlands have already attempted to introduce laws and regulations to cut herds.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency released a 13-year, 25-billion-euro plan in December 2021 to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2030. The plan would cut the country’s cattle, pig, and chicken population by 30 percent through voluntary buy-outs or, if necessary, expropriations by the state of about 3,000 farms.

In May, the European Union green-lit a Dutch plan to spend $1.6 billion to purchase or seize Dutch farmers’ land. This policy led to mass farmer protests under slogans like “No Farmers, No Food.”

In the United States, however, targets to reduce livestock emissions are being set not by government fiat but by a handful of corporate food producers.

In June 2021, Tyson Foods announced that it was “the first U.S.-based protein company to have an emissions reduction target approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).”

Tyson is one of the four dominant packing companies in the beef industry; the other three are Minnesota-based Cargill, and Brazilian-based JBS Foods and Marfrig. Together these four companies process about 85 percent of all beef in the United States.

And it is not just the packing oligopoly that is expanding its control into the ranching industry. A similar consolidation and vertical integration is happening within global grocery chains as well.

“Walmart has gone out and bought enormous ranches,” Ms. Hageman said. “They’re raising their own cattle, they’re processing it, and they’re selling it in their stores.”

‘Rich Countries Must Cut Meat Consumption’

The North American Meat Institute, whose members include meat packing companies that account for more than 95 percent of America’s meat and poultry products, launched its Protein PACT Academic Advisory Council in June, which works with its members “in setting greenhouse gas reduction targets to be approved by the Science Based Targets initiative.”

The SBTi, in partnership with organizations like the United Nations Global Compact and the World Wildlife Fund, pledges to “lead the way to a zero-carbon economy, boost innovation and drive sustainable growth by setting ambitious, science-based emissions reduction targets.” Calling itself the “global body enabling businesses to set emissions reduction targets in line with science,” the SBTi states that “companies in the forest, land and agriculture sectors will reduce at least 72% of emissions by no later than 2050.”

Tyson foods stated in its 2021 Sustainability Report that it had a “Science Based Target” of achieving a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and that addressing beef production would be key.

Despite the fact that greenhouse has emissions are a global phenomenon, emissions reduction plans typically focus on western countries. A 2022 report by Earth.org stated that in order to meet climate-change targets, “rich countries must cut meat consumption by at least 75%.”

A 2018 study published in Nature (pdf) claimed that beef consumption in western countries would need to decrease by 90 percent.

As cows become a prime target for climate activists, it is perhaps not coincidental that cattle ranchers are also the last livestock farmers who have not already been absorbed by global food conglomerates.

“Cattle is the single largest segment of American agriculture; it sets itself apart from the hog and poultry industries,” Mr. Bullard said. “The hog and poultry industry are primarily controlled by multinational meatpacking conglomerates, and they have the ability to defend their interests, unlike the disaggregated independent family farmers and ranchers scattered across the country.

“They simply don’t have the resources to fight back,” he said. “What the climate change folks have done is pick the low-hanging fruit, and that’s the U.S. cattle industry.”

Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef

Like with other segments of the world’s economy, the environmental social and governance (ESG) movement has made its way into food production as well. One of the key organizations in this effort is the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB).

The GRSB is an international organization with representatives from 24 countries, whose mission is “the advancement of sustainability in the global beef value chain.” Its members include three of the four dominant meat packers: Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill.

In 2021, the GRSB announced its commitment to “reduce the net global warming impact of beef 30% by 2030 through global sustainability goals.”

“The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef is perpetuating this globalism, where the standards are being set, not in the United States, but globally,” Mr. Bullard said. “They are dictating standards to producers, and they are able to enforce those standards by limiting access to the marketplace because GRSB consists of the world’s largest meat packers.

“But the standards are arbitrary in terms of how it affects the quality and safety of the meat that’s produced,” he said.

A Highly Segmented Industry

There are three stages to cattle production, which are often conducted by separate farms, and which have made the industry more difficult to vertically integrate. The first, called the cow-calf producer, maintains a mother cow herd and typically produces one calf each year per mother cow.

The second stage is the background stage, where calves from about six months old are fed a growing ration until they are about 1 year old and weigh about 900 pounds. The third stage are feedlots, where cows are fattened for slaughter, generally by grazing.

“We’re a highly segmented industry,” Mr. Kenzy said. “That’s why we’ve been so hard to capture.”

In the past, the stages of raising cattle featured arms-length transactions in which prices were set by supply and demand, as well as the quality of the ranchers’ cattle.

“The feedlot industry has become really concentrated in itself,” Mr. Hemmert said. “These huge feed yards have made these captive supply agreements with one of the four major packers to get all their cattle.”

USDA Interfering

The Biden administration’s actions regarding consolidation of the beef industry have been mixed.

On the one hand, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a $1 billion program to fund new processing facilities, including a $962,954 grant to Benson & Turner Foods Inc. to build a cattle and hog processing plant on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.

On the other hand, the USDA is currently attempting to mandate that cattle ranchers attach radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs) to their cattle in order to “track animals from birth to slaughter,” the American Veterinary Medical Association said.

The USDA claims this is for the purpose of tracking diseases, but many ranchers say it will be a prohibitive expense, particularly for smaller farmers.

“The driving force behind it is they want it for exports and they want it to benefit the multinational meat packers,” Mr. Bullard said. “If there’s a disease outbreak in a particular region but they can identify cattle not from that region, they’re able to continue trade uninterrupted, so there’s significant value.

“However, the meat packers don’t want to pay [ranchers] for the added cost of this kind of a program, so they convinced the government to require this to be a mandatory program” that ranchers must pay for, he said.

Others expressed concern that the RFID system will allow the packing conglomerates to impose whatever criteria they come up with on ranchers.

“It’s a way to regulate the production of beef in the name of sustainability,” Mr. Kenzy said, “basically registering all your cattle with the government.

He added that the Global Roundtable will ultimately tell ranchers how to graze, breed, and feed their cattle, rather than the market.

“This really isn’t about traceability or identification,” Ms. Hageman said. “We have a very robust identification and traceability system already in effect and working in the United States, and it’s worked for a long, long time.

“This is another form of surveillance,” she said, “and as we’ve seen by the federal government over the last couple of years, our government really likes to surveil the citizens of this country.

“What ultimately this will lead to is the USDA attempting to dictate operations and management decisions for our individual ranchers,” Ms. Hageman said. “It will also result in the vertical integration of the industry in the same way that they vertically integrated the pork and poultry industries, and it is going to be absolutely cost prohibitive for a lot of our smaller and our independent livestock producers.”

Antitrust Laws Unenforced

Meanwhile, there appears to be little interest within the Biden administration in enforcing antitrust laws in the animal agriculture industry. A relevant law is the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which was written “to assure fair competition and fair trade practices, to safeguard farmers and ranchers, … to protect consumers, … and to protect members of the livestock, meat, and poultry industries from unfair, deceptive, unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices,” the USDA states.

“Many people in the USDA abandoned their core mission, which is really protecting our independent producers and our livestock producers, and they have aligned themselves with big business,” Ms. Hageman said.

“We don’t want a monopoly when it comes to food supply, and the fact is that the United States produces the healthiest, highest quality beef of any country in the world,” she said. “You don’t hear about very many instances where there is a problem, and in fact the instances that you do hear about are typically in the processing end of it, not the cattle production end of it.

“Our cattle producers run their operations very well; they take excellent care of their land because they’re dependent on it to make a living,” she said. “They are some of the very best conservationists that there are, in terms of protecting these resources and open spaces.”

Mr. Hemmert, the Kansas cattle rancher, said ranchers can produce more if given the opportunity to be profitable.

“But if you’re not profitable, you’re not going to produce, and your banker is not going to let you,” he said.

Mr. Kenzy spoke of past efforts by the government to decimate a food supply.

“In the 1800s, they killed all the buffalo off in the northern plains, and they did that to eradicate the ability of the Indians to sustain themselves,” Mr. Kenzy said. “And this war on beef, it looks to me like it’s much the same thing.”

The Epoch Times contacted Walmart and Tyson Foods for comment. Walmart did not respond; Tyson food directed us to the reports referenced in this article.

Reuters contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

“It’s a red line. It isn’t right that these factory-made products should be able to market and sell their products off the backs of the cattleman,” Justin Tupper, President of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, told The Epoch Times.

“We are talking about chemical-laced cell-cultured products that can in some ways simulate meat, but they aren’t meat, and the American consumer needs to understand that,” added Mr. Tupper.

The synthetic “meat” market has already arrived in America.

Last year, the USDA gave two producers the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown chicken-like products in the United States.

While a decision over the labeling of the product has yet to be announced, the cattle industry plans on being aggressively proactive in both discussions with the USDA and, if needed, litigation after having learned a valuable lesson from the dairy farmers.

“The milk industry really dropped the ball,” said Mr. Tupper. “They never believed that anyone would think that almond milk was actual milk, so they brushed it off at the time. Now there are hundreds of items with milk in the name but with no milk in the product, and it has really hurt the entire dairy industry.”

“In the same way that you can’t milk an almond, you can’t get meat from a lab, only an animal, and we are not going to allow them to use our name to promote their product.”

Synthetic meat-like products are created by taking cells acquired from animals and placing them in a warm, sterile area, usually, a metal vat, where they are then combined with a solution of chemicals that causes the cells to double once a day.

The demand for synthetic meat has been spurred largely by corporate entities and government agencies working in tandem with the environmental movement.

Bill Gates, an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the USDA, believes meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

In a 2021 interview with Technology Review, Mr. Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Mr. Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

A switch from animal meat to a laboratory-grown substitute would eliminate the need for animals to be bred and slaughtered—in the U.S. alone, around 9 billion chickens and 32 million cattle are killed every year.

However, beef cattle production constitutes only a small fraction of the gasses that many environmentalists claim have had a negative impact on the planet.

Just 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from beef cattle production, while energy production and transportation produce a combined 54 percent of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Italian Ban

American ranchers aren’t the only ones raising the alarm. After two million Italians signed a petition calling for a ban against synthetic meat products, the Italian Senate passed a bill earlier this week, becoming the first country to make it illegal to produce or market the food, highlighting health concerns as the primary reason.

Ettore Prandini, President of Coldiretti, the largest association representing Italian agriculture, touted the vote as a legislative victory for the Italian people over corporate powers, telling the media that “the products in the laboratory in the authorization processes are not equated to food but rather to products of a pharmaceutical nature.”

An April 2023 report by the United Nations on the safety of “cell-based food products” cited 53 potential health hazards, including “the potential for expression of novel toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens or a change in expression of toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens as a result of genomic instability.”

The report concluded with a call for additional research and funding in order to draw more definitive conclusions.

Transparency Needed

Mr. Tupper isn’t calling for a ban on synthetic foods, only transparency, and believes that despite the large push for meat alternatives coming from corporate leaders and government agencies, the American cow is here to stay.

“The simple truth is that the taste of real beef cannot be replicated and, more importantly, when people discover the chemical storm that is actually in this product they are trying to pass off as meat, consumers are going to come to the conclusion that beef should come from a cow, not from a laboratory.”

“Our hopes are that the USDA will label this product for what it is, a cellular-based derivative of chemicals,” added Mr. Tupper.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

According to the report, July 1 inventory of all cattle and calves was 98.8 million head, down two percent year-over-year. It added that the beef cow herd went down by 2.4 percent year-over-year, a decline of 750,000 heads from July 2021 to the current total of 30.35 million heads. Also, the current beef cow inventory has declined by 6.3 percent, or a total of 2.05 million heads. Beef replacement heifers were down by 3.5 percent year-over-year.

Feeder cattle supplies are estimated from the sum of inventories of other heifers and steers (over 500 pounds) plus calves (under 500 pounds) minus cattle on feed. The estimated July 1 feeder supply was down 2.7 percent from last year.

Derrell Peel, an agricultural economics professor and specialist in livestock marketing at Oklahoma State University, wrote in the farm journal AGWeb that June feedlot marketings were up two percent year-over-year while placements in June were down 2.4 percent from one year ago.

“This is the fourth consecutive month of lower feedlot placements. In the past two months, placements have consisted of increased numbers of cattle under 700 pounds with sharper decreases in placements over 700 pounds leading to an overall decline in placements. Placements would have fallen faster without lightweight placements. Increased lightweight placements now mean that fewer cattle will be available for placement later,” Peel said.

Cattle producers are destocking at a rapid rate as pasture conditions deteriorate rapidly. The volume of feeder cattle in Oklahoma auctions over the past two weeks is up 24 percent year-over-year. It appears that calves are being weaned and marketed early.

Health Ranger Mike Adams disclosed in his situation update podcast that several Texas cattle raisers confirmed to him that cattle liquidation in the area is up by 80 percent.

“This is happening due to the extended drought affecting Texas, Oklahoma, and much of the southern and western parts of the country. The drought not only reduces grass production in the fields being grazed by cows, but it also causes hay production to plummet, reducing the future food supply that could keep cows fed through the fall and winter,” he said.

Adams said this will cause a temporary glut of beef in the food supply chain and would lower beef prices in the short term. But by the year 2025, the prices will surely skyrocket as cattle remain in short supply.

“It takes several years of good rain to replenish cattle populations and bring beef prices back into an affordable range,” the Health Ranger said.

“Panicking” Texas ranchers sell off cattle as hay and water supply dwindle

North Texas ranchers have been forced to make some really tough decisions, like selling off their cattle, due to very limited hay and water supply brought by the expanding summer drought. (Related: Drought-stricken Texas finally gets some rain, but it may not be enough to save crops and cattle.)

Grass has stopped growing with no rain and high temperatures. Grasshoppers have reportedly been destroying what’s available in some counties. Stock ponds are now starting to run low on water as well.

The drought has caused panic to most ranchers, driving them to sell off their entire herds as they do not have any other options. In the past few days, lines of trailers waiting to drop off cattle for auction have gone viral all over social media.

At the Decatur Livestock Market, owner Kimberly Irwin said trucks were stacked a mile in each direction, eventually unloading more than 2,600 animals, the highest numbers since the extreme drought of 2011. “You know, you want to hang on, but it’s just hard,” Irwin lamented.

She added that most of the cows have been older as owners are hoping they can keep the younger ones until conditions change.

“I don’t think it can break quick enough to save me, to tell the truth,” said Lee McLachlin, a rancher from Springtown.

McLachlin said he was holding off as long as he can with his cows, but he is aware that even a good rain now will not do much to bring the grass back quickly. He added that he is concerned about hay availability later in the year, with prices now already running over $100 per bale.

Visit FoodCollapse.com for more news related to the disruption of food supply and collapsing global food economy.

Watch the below video that talks about the current cattle liquidation situation in Texas.

This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

• Mass CATTLE deaths send shockwaves through food supply as speculation rises: Are they being poisoned on purpose?
• Texas drought could eclipse drought of 2011, the state’s worst on record.
• US crops, cattle herds at risk due to “intense heat and dry conditions.”

Sources include:

• AGWeb.com
• NASS.USDA.gov
• Brighteon.com
• EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
• CBSNews.com
• NATURAL NEWS