North PLATTE, NE – An agricultural trade group wants the Trump administration to loosen regulations on the meatpacking industry. With nearly 6.5 million cattle, Nebraska is one of the nation’s beef processing leaders.
The Meat Institute wrote to the Trump administration in January, outlining “strategies to reduce burdensome regulations and address meat prices for consumers.”Austin Frerick, an antitrust expert who has also written a book on the industry, claims that rolling back regulations outlined by the Meat Institute would result in lower production standards than those in China, for example.
According to Frerick, weakening meatpacking regulations would erode consumer confidence in domestically produced livestock. The Trump administration’s domestic economic agenda includes loosening rules for US corporations.
The Meat Institute also wants lawmakers to repeal a portion of the century-old Packers and Stockyards Act, which they revived in 2024 to tighten regulations on “direct polluters” who dump waste directly into groundwater sources. Emily Miller, a staff attorney at Food and Water Watch, believes the rules should include stricter regulations for “indirect” polluters.
The Meat Institute sees the move to protect workers regardless of pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, marital status, or age, which is also part of the new rule, as an attempt to “enshrine D-E-I principles” in the Packers and Stockyards Act.