Tucker Carlson interviews Joe Maxwell on foreign beef imports and the crisis facing American farmers and ranchers
Tucker Carlson speaks with Joe Maxwell, a farmer and founder of the Rural Independence Initiative, about Trump's decision to import hundreds of thousands of tons of beef from Argentina.
Summary
Joe Maxwell, a farmer, ag economics graduate, and founder of the Rural Independence Initiative, joins Tucker Carlson to discuss the Trump administration's decision to import 330,000 metric tons of beef — with 80,000 metric tons sourced from Argentina. Maxwell argues that the deal harms American farmers and ranchers, who are already going out of business at a rate of 63 per day, while doing nothing to lower grocery prices for consumers. He traces the roots of the crisis to extreme market concentration — four companies control 85% of U.S. beef processing, two of them Brazilian — and details specific allegations of regulatory capture, including a former USDA food safety chief who left office during a tainted-meat scandal and went to work for JBS, the world's largest meat packer. Maxwell also raises serious food safety concerns about the Argentine beef, noting that China recently rejected a shipment after detecting a banned antibiotic — a last-resort human medicine — in the meat, and that the U.S. still lacks mandatory country-of-origin labeling, meaning consumers will have no way of knowing whether this imported beef ends up in their hamburger.
He also explains what the imported beef is likely to be used for: lean trimmings mixed with fattier U.S. beef to achieve standard hamburger fat ratios (e.g., 80/20), as well as emulsified products. He contrasts the high training and inspection standards in U.S. union meat-processing plants with the less certain conditions in foreign facilities, raising further quality concerns about the incoming shipments.
On the question of how consumers can protect themselves, he details the 'Product of the USA' voluntary label, which now — following a decade-long complaint he filed with USDA and a ruling in his favor near the end of the Biden administration — legally requires that beef bearing that label was born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States. The Trump administration has maintained this rule. He encourages consumers to look for that label and to urge grocers and restaurants to stock products carrying it, as it genuinely benefits American farmers and regional processors.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Trump's beef import announcement and its impact on American farmers
Tucker Carlson: Joe Maxwell, thank you so much for doing this. The president has announced that we're going to be importing a lot of beef from Argentina — a huge amount of beef from Argentina. And in his justification for this, he did not mention beef prices in the United States. He said we're doing this because Argentina's in trouble and we're trying to help Argentina. So I think this was very confusing for a lot of people watching. What do you think is going on here?
Joe Maxwell: You're absolutely right. The president has actually made two announcements about importing beef from Argentina. The first time, which was quite a shock to all of us out here in rural America, was that he was going to quadruple the amount of beef coming into the United States. His basis was that the people of Argentina were struggling to survive and he liked their president. Most recently he has announced 330,000 metric tons, of which he's purchased 80,000 metric tons from Argentina. And so we're beginning to really dig into that and take a look at what the real motivation is. It clearly isn't in the interest of — we know for a fact it's not America's farmers and ranchers. We're seeing the cattle market go down right after we just started making a profit. And we don't see the results in the grocery store. Consumers still can't afford their food.
Tucker Carlson: I think there are a lot of potential motives here. One is geopolitical. The president of Argentina is a close ally of the prime minister of Israel, unlike President Maduro, who is an opponent. So that's certainly a factor in this. There may be others. What would the others be?
Joe Maxwell: Well, first, I respect the geopolitical landscape, but we have to put America first. Farmers and ranchers — 63 farmers a day are going out of business while people can't afford their groceries. There is a serious problem in rural America. Farmers and ranchers are in crisis, not unlike what the president described of those in Argentina. So I respect that those folks may be struggling to survive, but so are America's farmers and ranchers. You've got to balance that, and we don't see that happening in the White House.
Why ranchers are going broke while meat prices are at record highs
Tucker Carlson: What are some of the answers? I'd ask you to pause on the why — for those of us not in the business, why is there a crisis in ranching? If meat prices are at an all-time high, when oil prices go up, the oil companies thrive. But meat prices have gone up and ranchers are going out of business. What is the problem, do you think?
Joe Maxwell: You mentioned oil companies. Our gas prices in my little town just went up again — crude oil's down, gas is up. Makes no sense. But the reason is that those companies, a handful of companies, control the oil from the wellhead — well, actually from under the ground — all the way to the gas pump. With cattle, and much of what farmers and ranchers raise, we're price-takers. We don't set the price. We have to pay our inputs whatever we're told by a handful of companies the price is. Then we hold up what we raise and say, how much will another handful of companies give us for it?
There are four companies that control 85% of all the cattle processing in the United States. Two of them are Brazilian. And we have to ask them, how much will you give me for that? So when we see prices in the grocery store go up, there's not a correlation that America's farmers and ranchers are going to receive a greater benefit from that price increase. Because in the middle, it's so heavily concentrated — between the meat packers and the retail grocers. Four big-box grocery stores control 69% of all the groceries in the United States. So that concentration between the farmer and the consumer can cause the consumer to be price-gouged and the farmer to be short-paid for the real value of their goods — in this case, beef.
Tucker Carlson: It doesn't sound like an efficient market. That's not the capitalism I was promised.
Joe Maxwell: Tucker, I have an ag economics degree. I don't hold myself up as an economist, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a professor from my old econ class to understand that capitalism doesn't work if it doesn't have the restraint of competition. That's one of the base fundamentals. A lot of us have been trying to get traction on this — both Democrats and Republicans have brought us to this horrible state, where a handful of companies can have so much influence over Congress and the Oval Office. And the fact is that when we try to do something to force antitrust enforcement, or try to put new laws in place to modernize those — many of which were passed in the early 1900s or late 1800s — people scream "free market." Folks who want to wrap themselves in the free market, which I pull myself out for, want to call me a socialist because I want to implement the fundamentals and make sure they're in place — like the restraint of competition — in our capitalist system. Otherwise, a handful of people get all the wealth.
We launched the Rural Independence Initiative to try to have these kinds of conversations. It's been both major parties that have gotten us into this position. It started with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put it on steroids. What we now see is this restraint in the market where new companies can't even enter. We can't get new competition. Entrepreneurship is almost dead in most sectors in America. We say "free market" and we say "capitalist" — I'm a capitalist. I've owned companies, businesses, I've owned a farm. But capitalism doesn't work unless we allow competition, and both parties have eroded competition to where there isn't any.
The egg price example: how market concentration enables price gouging
Joe Maxwell: Four companies controlling the market — let me give you an idea on egg prices. When avian flu came out, eggs are a staple, so I hope most viewers get this. Your eggs went up 300% in the grocery store. The largest egg producer in the United States, Cal-Maine, saw profits go up tenfold. The avian flu was serious — animals died. But the fact is they only lost about 6% to 7% of the flock. So they screamed avian flu, which gave them an excuse to hike up prices, gouge the consumer, and rake in billions of dollars. One company made more money in a quarter than it made in the whole year before. And why? Because USDA economists came out and said, "We see prices are way far above what they ought to be based upon the facts. We expect other people to come into this emerging market and lower the price of eggs." Four months later, the report came back and said, "We're not sure why nobody came in." But no one did, because the concentration is so heavy you can't get into the market. With four companies controlling retail groceries and their sweetheart deals with the big four producers of any food item, you can't get in. And it allows those companies to gouge the consumer and short-pay the farmer, and they reap all the money. They've extracted the wealth out of rural America.
We've launched the Rural Independence Initiative to put aside party politics. Strip yourself of party identity, let's roll up our sleeves and work together, and let us understand that capitalism does not work without the restraint of competition.
Tucker Carlson: I would think you'd have the overwhelming majority of the public on your side with that initiative.
Joe Maxwell: We sure hope so. We just launched — we are a cross-party effort. When we make an endorsement of a candidate, we don't tell the public if it's a D or an R or an I. It should be the person. It ought to be that they stand up against this power, this influence in Washington, D.C. They're willing to go toe to toe. We endorsed Congressman Massey. We didn't win that. We worked hard, others did too, so did the congressman. But we're endorsing candidates that will go toe to toe with this power and not bend to the influence in Washington, D.C.
JBS, the Batista family, and the influence of multinational meat companies
Joe Maxwell: This beef deal is really about the White House, and to some degree members of Congress, bending to the influences of this monopolistic oligarchy power. When they get market share and market power, they therefore get economic power. I talked about eggs gouging the consumers — they make billions of dollars. Then they invest that in lobbyists and campaign contributions in order to stay in that power. And so what happens is the Batista family can just walk into the Oval Office. That's the owners of the world's largest meat packer, JBS, owned by one family from Brazil. They can walk into the Oval Office and have a sit-down. They can negotiate between the president of Brazil and the president of the United States. That's the power these companies and corporations now have, and the influence they have not only over our government but other governments. And we have to come together as a people and push back against that power.
How the current beef deal came to pass
Tucker Carlson: So how do you think this specific deal came to pass?
Joe Maxwell: I think we mentioned the geopolitical climate. There's no doubt that with the first deal last October, November — the quadrupling of the importation of beef from Argentina — it was because of an election in Argentina. And it wasn't looking good for an ally of the president, someone he considers a friend. I'm not an expert on geopolitics, so I won't say it was good to have him re-elected or not. I just don't know. But I do know that that's a fact, and therefore we quadrupled the importation to raise and secure the economic future. We also gave $20 billion in taxpayer money to Argentina and put together a banking deal with other financiers of about $20 billion, plus this beef deal.
But the other thing is just the influence of JBS. JBS has plants in Argentina. Let me give you an idea of how it works. JBS is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, and they have confessed to bribing up to 1,800 politicians in Brazil in order to get an increase in the value of their shares, to borrow billions to invest in the United States in the meat market. They bought beef, pork, and chicken — so they are a protein company.
So the president is looking for money for his inaugural committee. Pilgrim's Pride, which is JBS's poultry division, gave $5 million to the Trump inaugural committee. And for years, JBS had been trying to get on the stock exchange — to get publicly listed in the United States. Shortly thereafter, they got that. Shortly thereafter, Wesley Batista and his brother met with the president. It's reported that they talked about beef prices and Brazilian tariffs. They have had strong relationships with the president during his prior first term. We had bailout money to try to help America's farmers and ranchers that I helped work on. The Trump administration moved over $60 million of that bailout for America's farmers to JBS to help bail them out.
The 2017 tainted meat scandal and the revolving door
Joe Maxwell: There was a man by the name of Al Almanza in 2017, under the first term. You can look this up — this is fact, as it's been reported and as the investigations, the Brazilian police investigations, have indicated. The Brazilian police started an investigation called "Weak Meat," and they believed that inspectors were being bribed to let tainted, rotted, abscessed meat out of Brazil — millions of pounds. And they discovered it was so. They notified the world that there was a bunch of bad meat on the market, the beef market. China, Chile, and other countries within three days closed their ports to Brazilian beef. JBS is a major beef producer, and they were tied into this investigation along with a couple of other meat companies. And it took the U.S. 97 days to close its border to Brazilian beef. 97 days. I always suspected — never did the research — it took about 97 days to bring in millions of pounds of rotten meat, and we were the only country that didn't close our border.
So there has been favored status. And the kicker here, Tucker — do you know where Al Almanza now works?
Tucker Carlson: No.
Joe Maxwell: He — I laugh, it's that bad. This is the kind of influence these big multinational companies have over our government. He got a job at JBSSA — that's their South American main company. They created it for him: head of global food safety. It's undisclosed how much they pay him, but he left USDA where he was the interim head of FSIS — that's the Food Safety Inspection Service for the United States of America, which runs the inspections to let meat in or not into this country. And he turned around and went to work for the very people that had been caught, along with others in Brazil, trying to move millions of pounds of tainted meat. And he left our borders open for 97 days in 2017.
Tucker Carlson: How was that legal? How can a U.S. government regulator leave his job and then work for the industry that he regulated? Why do we allow that?
Joe Maxwell: I don't know why we allow that, Tucker. Maybe you and I need to get together with a few other folks that have similar views and go after both parties until they stop doing that. We call it the revolving door. It's very serious. It is just one component of the influence that these big companies have. They can walk into the Oval Office, they can walk into any U.S. Senator's or member of Congress's office. Unfortunately, in our opinion, based upon farm policy, the majority of these support what the big companies want, not what America's farmers want.
And the other influence they have is at appointment time. They line up their people from the industry to get jobs within the administration and are deep-seated into the regulatory agencies. So in the beginning, they're appointed and they're regulating themselves, because they've got one of their folks inside. And then after that administration leaves, the door goes the other way — they go back home. They're kind of guaranteed a job.
That is the amount of influence. That's what happens when we fight for a free market and we fail to put the safeguards in place. It's what we get when we're distracted by so many issues that they throw at us that all of us lose sight of what the real issues are — and that is protecting our economy, protecting our rural communities, protecting the people. And instead we start thinking it's more serious if we aren't protecting JBS's future or something like that.
I often joke that it didn't matter which presidential candidate won, D or R, because it was just a matter of which Goldman Sachs executive was going to be the head of Treasury back in the day. And if you look, that's kind of how it worked. There really wasn't a distinction between the parties for about 40 years as it relates to this — but they fight over things and then they let their billionaires and their monopolistic corporations rob all of us. Rob the consumer at the grocery store. Short-pay the farmer.
These big meat companies have been accused and have settled — they didn't admit they did it, but they were accused of price-fixing wages. There was something called the Agri-Stats system, and they shared data so they could depress wages. So it's not just farmers and ranchers — it's also the workers that get short-paid.
So that's the unfortunate state that we're in. And people are angry. Out here in rural America, we're angry. We're angry over this beef deal. Many thought things were getting better. We were starting to make a profit. And then the president takes this course of action and plummets our market. And we know that our neighbors going into the grocery store — well, we go into the grocery store too — we're not going to see that benefit either.
The global beef supply shortage and the logic of the import deal
Tucker Carlson: You're aware that global central planners have for some time said out loud that people eat too much beef and we need to reduce consumption of beef. They're not hiding it. The World Economic Forum has had a bunch of different panels on this exact topic. Do you see a connection between that ideology and the decline in global beef supply?
Joe Maxwell: I don't think they had to leverage their plans. I think Mother Nature has leveraged a lot of the plans, and this concentration in the meat market. I do believe there's evidence that those meetings occurred and those conversations occurred. But the Western United States, as well as other areas in the world, have faced droughts. We're facing extreme weather patterns that we've not faced before, that caused costs to go up. And prices didn't go up because of the concentration. Four companies control the meat market — four companies, 85%, two of them Brazilian. In pork, four companies control 68 to 70%. Chicken, about 68%. So it's everywhere. And a lot of the same companies control all three proteins.
These companies are global. U.S. Tyson, Cargill — it's not just Brazilian. JBS is the largest meat protein company in the world, and they have just been short-paying farmers all over the world. There are riots and protests going on everywhere, from India to Europe, by farmers. That's what I think has really put most of the strain on the market. There's no doubt certain regulations and other things have impacted profitability, so I don't want to take away from that, but the bigger factor has just been the constraints put on by Mother Nature and a market that's relentlessly controlled.
Tucker Carlson: So you described shrinking supply, rising demand, and then a president who says, "Somehow I found this huge cache of beef at below-market prices, and I'm going to send it to the United States." And you made the point that you don't know where this is coming from, but logic suggests it's unsellable meat and we're getting stuck with it. So that raises the question — I think I'm fairly characterizing what you said — how are we sure that this is fit for human consumption? What's the track record here?
Joe Maxwell: The track record's not good. I gave you the 2017 example — 97 days to close the border to abscessed meat, when China, for God's sake, shut down their border to it in three days. I mean, we're always comparing ourselves to China, and somehow they got the message and the memo a lot quicker.
But I think one of the most important issues here is that the United States does not have mandatory country-of-origin labeling on beef and pork. I can tell you where this shirt I have on comes from. I can buy a dog treat and it tells me what country it was made in. When you go to the grocery store, it doesn't tell you where the beef comes from. So this meat — because we don't have mandatory country-of-origin labeling — Senator Thune, the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, has a bill called the American Beef Labeling Act. In a bipartisan vote, it was voted into the farm bill a few Thursdays ago before they broke. The farm bill didn't get through, but it was a very encouraging bipartisan effort.
Somebody is not going to discount in a seller's market. If something's in short supply, I'm not going to say, "Oh, I'll give you 25% off because I don't have enough of it." That's just not logical. So it has to be something they couldn't move somewhere else. And the track record is that the president's not saying where he's getting it. That lack of transparency is one concern. And America's people won't know if it showed up in their grocery store or not.
Let me put the numbers into perspective. On average last year, the average pounds of beef imported into the United States per month was 447 million pounds. That's the average for the whole year. The president is going to bring this meat in in 90 days — it is over 750 million pounds. In 90 days, that would be 250 million pounds a month more. That's over a 50% increase per month compared to what the average was last year. It's a lot of beef. It's not just laying around somewhere. It's too big a pile of beef, and it's a new order — it's not like it was already in the pipeline.
American consumers aren't going to know where their beef comes from because we don't have mandatory country-of-origin labeling. Everyone viewing this ought to call their U.S. Senator, their member of Congress, and the White House — because the president does not support mandatory country-of-origin labeling — and demand that it be passed immediately when they return, so that we can at least know if we're eating some of this junk that's coming through.
Why the meat industry opposes country-of-origin labeling
Tucker Carlson: What's the potential or even theoretical justification for opposing country-of-origin labeling? I don't understand that.
Joe Maxwell: The National Cattlemen's Beef Association — one of the largest trade and lobbying organizations — represents itself as the voice of America's cattle producers. Its members are about 5% or so of U.S. cattle producers, but it also has members that are the big packers. The NCBA and the packers push hard to not have country-of-origin labeling. We had it up until 2015. Then it got tied up in a dispute with the WTO after Mexico and Canada sued the United States in the tribunal. There was going to be a penalty placed on the U.S. for a restraint in trade. Congress got nervous and repealed it in 2015, under the Obama administration.
So these groups say it's going to cost too much money, it's going to raise prices. That's the fear tactic they use to get to Congress. Everybody's worried about affordability right now. But the reality — the politics behind it — is that these four companies that control 85% of the beef in the United States are international. They're importing and exporting beef all over the world. They export U.S. beef and import Brazilian beef. The same company, moving it all around the world. They know that the American people — and public surveys have proven this — will pay the American farmer more money. They feel and understand it's a safer product because there have been so many problems in the import world, and they'll pay more. And these companies don't want to lose their ability to commingle, to mix.
We're not talking about a chunk of steak or a roast. We're talking about some grind or emulsified product. They bring that into the United States and they throw it in a vat — a million pounds of hamburger — and they stir it all up. And they don't want to list and track all the countries that stuff came from that they threw in that vat.
Tucker Carlson: Come on. That's disgusting. I have trouble hearing this.
Joe Maxwell: I have trouble as an American farmer believing we've allowed the food system to get to such a state that that's what we're feeding people. It's a dang disgrace, but that's the reality of where we are. They have so much influence that they are able to keep mandatory country-of-origin labeling off.
Now, I commend Senator Thune. He's the leader of the U.S. Senate. He is from a great state that raises cattle. It didn't go to his head when he became a national leader — he stayed focused on a priority back home and he delivered a great vote, along with the Democrats. Hats off to them too for voting for a Republican amendment. They're fighting hard, but they're up against the wall. Every viewer should call their member of the Senate, their member of the House, and the White House, and demand it. With the president bringing in 330,000 metric tons — which equals over 750 million pounds of beef, which is over a 50% increase per month — that's the amount that's going to be in the grocery store. We deserve to know where it came from. Tell us on the label before we buy.
China rejects Argentine beef over banned antibiotic residue
Tucker Carlson: I have read — I have no idea if it's true, which is why I'm glad you're here — that China had banned beef imports from Argentina on the basis of hormones or chemicals in the meat that they believed were dangerous. Is that true?
Joe Maxwell: Yes. There is a very potent antibiotic — I apologize to the listeners and viewers, I can't pronounce the word — but it is an antibiotic that is used for humans when situations are extremely serious and other antibiotics have failed. The reason it's rarely used is because its residue stays in the muscle tissue for very long extended periods of time. Its use in livestock has been banned in Argentina, the U.S., China, Canada, and many other countries, because we all worry about what we eat. If it's got just a little bit of antibiotics in it, here's why that matters: one of the reasons overuse of antibiotics in the production of livestock is a real problem is because this residue stays in the meat — you eat it, and so you have a little bit of antibiotics in you. Well, the bug or germ that your body's fighting gets a little sick, but it's not enough antibiotics to kill it. That little germ or virus mutates and becomes resistant to the antibiotic, creating antibiotic-resistant disease and illness.
So that's why this one is particularly concerning — it stays in the muscle tissue for a very long extended time. If you're sick and you need this antibiotic, it's not toxic to your body. It's a good thing. It's used in malaria and some other serious conditions. But not in livestock, because countries that have banned it don't want people to have just a little bit of it in their system, because one day they may need it. And if the virus or whatever has become resistant to it, then it no longer works. We lose that great tool — that last-resort antibiotic.
However, somebody over in Argentina is using it in the production of their cattle. Note that we just brought in 80,000 metric tons — about a little over 170 million pounds. And China caught it. They said, "We're not taking this. This antibiotic that we detected in this meat is banned from use in livestock here. We're not going to take meat from another country that allows that to be used." And they rejected it. They didn't test everything — they just rejected the whole shipment.
A few days later, the president announced that one of the first places he's going for his 330,000 metric tons of beef is Argentina. The first deal he struck was for 80,000 metric tons of the 330,000 coming from Argentina. I have no evidence, nor am I making overt accusations. But it does scare the heck out of me that if we're talking about 750 million pounds of beef and it's not just laying around somewhere, somebody's trying to peddle something they can't sell elsewhere. We know Argentina has some beef they need to sell, and it is at a 25% discount. So we should be asking this administration to beef back up the people they let go, get them back into FSIS, get them on the front line, and we need to be testing to make sure that Argentine beef doesn't have that residue in it that China found.
Country-of-origin labeling history and the "Product of the USA" label
Tucker Carlson: Is it possible to buy an all-American hamburger in the United States?
Joe Maxwell: It is.
Tucker Carlson: How?
Joe Maxwell: I'll get you in touch with some good farmers in Maine. We eat American beef in my house, period. But for the regular consumer who perhaps is too far removed from the farm to be able to do that — there are a few companies. Let me explain something. I filed the first complaint with USDA on this, so I don't want people to get confused. Right now, the country does not have mandatory country-of-origin labeling — that's where the government says you've got to put the label on your shirt, on dog treats, and also on that beef. They don't do it on beef now, and it should be mandatory.
But what was even more egregious was that companies were able to put on the label of a processed meat, as well as meat products in the meat case, "Product of the USA." This was allowed beginning in George W. Bush's administration, and every president since then had let it go along. I filed a complaint with USDA against that. Towards the end of the Biden administration, they ruled in our favor. It was about a decade-long fight. The American Grassfed Association was involved, Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, was a big part of it — I don't want to leave anybody out.
Biden agreed, and now that means if a company is going to voluntarily use — not mandatorily, but if they're going to choose, by the goodness of their hearts, to put "Product of the USA" on a meat product — it has to be born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States of America. That is now the standard for that label. It's voluntary.
The Trump administration, while it threw out a lot of things that the Biden administration did over at USDA that we opposed — on Packers and Stockyards Act rules — one thing they did keep was that rule, and they've really marketed it and worked to get it out into the marketplace. So if you go to your grocery store — not saying you can always find it — companies can now, if they are buying cattle that was born in the U.S., raised in the U.S., slaughtered in the United States, and processed in the USA, put that label on it, and it now has meaning. You should look for that label. You should encourage your grocer to get that meat and use that label.
FSIS is the one that does the labeling, and that is their rule now. It was put in by a Democratic administration and maintained by a Republican administration, which is always good in our view, because that usually says we won that one. You can make a gain with one party and then the other party comes in and just because of politics — and I know you know this, Tucker, you live it and have for years — we identify more as a party in America than we do as the people of America. And just because the other party wanted to do something, we naturally think it's bad.
This MAHA movement, which I work with, and we work with many of the MAHA leaders, is an example of that. But that's what people should look for. It is available now. Not many companies are using it, but you can encourage your grocer, your restaurant, to get that label, get the companies that are doing that. They're usually your regional, local meat packers that are seeking that label to differentiate themselves against the JBSs and the Tysons and the others. And it's good for that local processor, that regional processor. It helps the farmer and the rancher, and you're guaranteed now in America that you're eating something from America and you are actually benefiting the American farmer.
What the imported beef will be used for — the grind and emulsified products
Tucker Carlson: The beef that the president's going to import from Argentina and maybe other places — what will that be used for? What percentage will go into ground beef and processed meat products, as opposed to intact meat products like steak?
Joe Maxwell: It's my understanding that the president has announced that within two weeks of his announcement he is going to have an executive order to further define what this is. From the original reporting and his statements, some of it on social media, it will be ground burger — it will be ground. It will not be whole muscles, like a roast or a KC strip or a T-bone or any of those. It will be the grind — what we would call out in farm country, the grind off the cattle.
What I will tell you is what's going on today. The United States raises prime, good stock cattle, but sometimes it's too lean. They want to sell 80% lean hamburger — 80/20 — or 73% lean, 27% fat. So they'll bring in lean from foreign countries to add to our fat coming off our prime cattle. Because prime means marbling, more fat. So the U.S. raises a lot of fat. It needs lean to make the 73% or the 80% or 90% balance out. You go and look at hamburger — it'll be some percent lean, some percent fat. And the American people don't know, but a lot of that is mixed. So I suspect they're bringing in lean trimmings to mix with U.S. fat as much as anything, as well as some of the emulsified product out of the plants.
Tucker Carlson: What does "emulsified" mean in this context?
Joe Maxwell: I call them tailings — I've worked in meat processing plants, and maybe that's not a great term. It's what's left on the table after the day is done. Somebody's standing there trimming, and they pick it up — the fat off the brisket or something — and put it over into a hopper. Meat companies, several decades ago, started running that through a machine, like you make a hot dog. A hot dog is emulsified. It goes through this machine, so it's not chunks anymore. It becomes blended with fat.
Tucker Carlson: Like a slurry?
Joe Maxwell: Yeah, kind of like a stiff slurry. The emulsifier blends it all up, cuts it up so that there aren't any chunks. It's not like a Polish sausage where you can find a chunk of pork every now and then. It's like a hot dog — you ever look at a hot dog? It's been emulsified. Heavily, finely ground, I guess is a way to put it.
Tucker Carlson: Just a personal question — did your time working in a processing plant make you more or less excited about hot dogs?
Joe Maxwell: I love a good hot dog.
Tucker Carlson: I do too. I don't know if you can deter me from that, but you're coming close.
Joe Maxwell: A good beef hot dog made in a good plant is a good hot dog. It's the ability — you get bad meat. I don't know where 330,000 metric tons of beef is coming from, and it's not coming from a good solid U.S. plant. In beef, over 70% or thereabouts of those workforces are trained union shops with UFCW — the workers are high-level trained, we have inspections in our plants. But overseas, that's not necessarily the case in foreign countries. I'm not necessarily running down the road to eat a hot dog from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, or somewhere else. But if it's a good American hot dog on the Fourth of July on the grill, I'm with you.
Tucker Carlson: Joe Maxwell, I can't think of anyone who could have explained it as well as you just did, and I'm grateful for that. Thank you very much for doing this.
Joe Maxwell: Thank you for having us on. And thank you for the work that you do. We appreciate you and many folks out there now that are really getting to the bottom of what's going on. We appreciate that very much.