Antitrust Enforcement Lags, As Foreign Control of Meat Sector Grows
Antitrust Enforcement Lags, As Foreign Control of Meat Sector Grows
What happened to the Trump Administration’s promised investigation?
July 27, 2026
In May, an announcement by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins of a criminal antitrust investigation into the “Big Four” meatpackers (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef) over potential collusion and beef price inflation aroused hope among cattle producers. Unfortunately, there has been no apparent movement in the investigation, and cattle markets continue to be highly volatile and completely disconnected from consumer prices.
Since the announcement in May, the futures markets have plummeted, risen, and crashed again, costing producers hundreds of millions in value. The cash market for live cattle in South Dakota dropped over $380 per head from high to low. The commodity futures markets were promoted as a tool to manage risk. For decades these markets have instead been a tool to manipulate commodity prices to the benefit of large corporate buyers. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, held captive by corporate interests, has failed to police market-distorting trading.
In addition to the CFTC, antitrust cops at the USDA, Justice Department, and FTC are asleep at the wheel, as record volumes of unlabeled, non-inspected, below-cost-of-production imports meet the growing demand for beef, a far cry from the competitive marketplace of the 1970s during which producers received over 80% of the consumer beef dollar. Today, powerful unregulated middlemen have cooperated in lowering prices to livestock producers while gouging consumers. Anticompetitive practices have reduced producer share of the retail dollar to as low as 27% during the pandemic and other unpredictable “black swan” events. An unfair and unsustainable share of the meat dollar now goes to these powerful middlemen, including the big meatpackers, big food service, and the big retailers, in what has become a massive mining operation of rural America.
We’ve been here before. In 1921, Wyoming Senator John Kendrick convinced Congress to take action to protect livestock producers with this description of the intensifying market monopoly:
“It has been brought to such a high degree of concentration that it is dominated by few men. The big packers, so-called, stand between hundreds of thousands of producers on one hand and millions of consumers on the other. They have their fingers on the pulse of both the producing and consuming markets and are in such a position of strategic advantage they have unrestrained power to manipulate both markets to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of over 99 percent of the people of the country. Such power is too great to repose in the hands of any men.”
Today’s meatpacking/big food monopoly is far more powerful than the robber barons of Senator Kendrick’s day. The Packers and Stockyards Act they adopted to protect farmers and ranchers by stopping unfair business practices and preventing monopolies has been gutted by financially compromised presidential administrations and the judges they appoint. New rules to clarify the original intent have been blocked by both Trump administrations.
Now, following decades of forced U.S. herd liquidation, the big meatpackers are closing plants, further reducing our nation’s ability to feed ourselves. Misguided trade policies are replacing beef from domestic sources with cheaper, lower quality imports, up nearly 10% over the past year. Despite the growing infestation of New World screw worm coming across the southern border, USDA recently announced reopening to Mexican cattle imports. This decision, with total disregard for our nation’s herd health and the welfare of domestic producers, has precipitated another devastating market crash from which middlemen and insider traders will greatly profit.
Independent stocker and feeder operations have never paid more for replacement cattle, which leaves them highly vulnerable to collapsing prices, potentially adding more losses to the 77,000 feeding operations already out of business. Large packer-aligned feeding operations already have a long history of receiving preferential treatment and pushing replacement cattle prices beyond the break-even point for independent non-vertically aligned stocker/feeders. Buying in a more competitive market than you’re selling into is a fool’s game.
Where are the law enforcers after the many recent court settlements for price fixing and market manipulation? The attorneys get paid, the meatpackers pay a minor fee equivalent to the cost of doing business, and nothing changes for producers and consumers. No producer in their right mind would consider increasing their herd with the meat cartel’s power to dictate prices now and in the future. That’s why our domestic cattle numbers are at a 70-year low, with serious long-term consequences for consumers.
Only strict law enforcement and renewed competition can correct this injustice.
JBS, the biggest meatpacker in the world, was convicted of corruption in Brazil for bribing government officials and using stolen money to buy up U.S. slaughter capacity in all three meat categories, beef, pork and poultry. In spite of that, JBS still won approval to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, following a $5 million dollar donation to the president’s inauguration fund. What further damage can this company do with access to America’s capital markets?
Hope of rebuilding our nation’s cattle herd is a fantasy unless the market hears a clear message: market manipulators, including the big meatpackers, food service companies, and retailers, will be investigated, prosecuted, and, if warranted, broken up.
We don’t need more speeches in Washington, we need action! We’ve allowed ourselves to become dependent on a Brazilian crime family and other monopolists for our food. With so many supply chain failures, gaps in food safety — both foreign and domestic — and military conflicts around the world, it should be obvious why the inability to feed ourselves is a serious national security problem.
Independent Beef Association of North Dakota (I-BAND)
PO Box 2
Sterling, ND 58572
www.i-band.org
independent.beef.assoc.nd@gmail.com
Kerry Docktor 701-220-7941
Regime Change by journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman details second-term Trump administration foreign policy, including covert efforts involving JBS owner Joesley Batista to facilitate the exit of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The Washington Post reports that Batista functioned as a key intermediary in discussions held in Caracas concerning potential exile terms for Maduro. For more details, visit The Washington Post.
Background on the Intermediary Role
The Mission: Batista traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, carrying a four-point proposal that included convincing long-time ruler Nicolas Maduro to step down from power.
The Access: Despite corruption scandals involving his meatpacking company JBS S.A., Batista gained entry to top-level circles through personal connections. (Washington Post)