The dumbest way to lower beef prices

6 March, 2026

Breaking up meatpacking companies would make steak even more expensive.

Editorial Board

“After breaking up the existing industry leaders, the Democratic bill envisions a host of government subsidies — including financial assistance and loan guarantees — to help small businesses acquire and operate meatpacking plants. Yet the real solution is expanding supply, not fragmenting the industry.

‘“Imagine the federal government mandating that Ford only manufacture trucks, while forcing them to sell off all their other vehicle lines to separate small businesses,’ said Julie Anna Potts, the CEO of the Meat Institute, a trade association. ‘These facilities are expensive, hard to run efficiently and safely, and are part of a complex value chain.’

“The biggest driver of rising prices is that the U.S. has its smallest herd of cattle in 75 years while demand for red meat continues to rise.”

Meat Institute: Schumer Bill will Decimate Meat and Poultry Industry

5 March, 2026

Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts said, ““This proposal is absurd,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts. “Schumer’s bill and other efforts to villainize meat packers is simply reckless election year pandering that threatens to damage a crucial industry at the center of every American meal. If the Senator is trying to make meat and poultry more affordable for consumers, this is the wrong approach. It will have the opposite effect. While this may be just a messaging bill to Senator Schumer, it is real life for American families, farmers and ranchers and for the 3.2 million Americans employed throughout the industry.”

You can’t legislate the cattle cycle

5 March, 2026

Beef supply chain economic expert Hyrum Egbert says, “This bill is being marketed as consumer relief and rancher fairness. But the assumptions underneath it, about how prices form, how retail behaves, and what happens when you force structural breakups in a capital-intensive chain, don’t line up with the actual mechanics.

You can’t legislate the cattle cycle. You can only decide whether policy helps the system move through it with less friction, or whether it adds friction, raises costs, and then acts surprised when the rancher, the packer, and the consumer all feel more pain.”

Schumer, Senate Dems go after meat industry concentration

5 March, 2026

Glynn Tonsor, an economist at Kansas State University, told Agri-Pulse: “that larger cattle plants generally can harvest an animal more cheaply than smaller ones, often as a result of different procedures and labor distributions. He said if restrictions are set on size and ownership, it would limit some of the ‘economies of scale’ benefits that larger beef processors have been able to provide.”

In the same story, Agri-Pulse also reported: Derrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, said consolidation has occurred because it's "cost effective." If the meatpackers were broken up, "you will lose that cost efficiency," which will raise costs in the middle of the industry, above producers and below consumers. When those costs rise, he said consumers tend to pay more, and producers tend to get paid less.

He also said beef packers specifically were currently losing "tremendous amounts of money" in the present cattle market amid a combination of low inventory and high demand.

"This is a horrible idea," he said of the proposal. "It will make prices for consumers go higher. It will make cattle prices ... go lower, and it will infinitely extend the amount of time it would take to rebuild this industry to get to a point where there would be larger supplies."

He added: "There will be no winners in this, other than a bunch of lawyers. That's the bottom line."

What is Sen. Schumer’s Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act?

5 March, 2026

Drovers reports, “John Nalivka, Sterling Marketing Inc. president, echoes his concern regarding the proposed legislation.

“Packers break carcasses — politicians break companies,” Nalivka summarizes. “It should not surprise anyone, but the politicians have produced an answer to lower food prices and that is to break up companies into smaller entities. Though he did not ask for my opinion, I would tell Senator Schumer, ‘That plan goes against the one thing that allows a company to compete, including meatpackers, and that is economies of scale.’”

Schumer’s Pretense of Knowledge

4 March, 2026

Industry expert Nevil Speers says "higher beef prices are largely the result of improved demand (the signal is loud and clear) – not the packer squeezing margin out of the middle (for more see here). And meanwhile, consumers continue to prove their willingness to trade up when it comes to buying beef (because they like it!)."