President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday intended to make it easier for ranchers and farmers to process their own meat and sell it directly to consumers, characterizing the move as an effort to reduce the industry’s reliance on a handful of large meat-packers.
“For the first time ever, we’re going to give farmers and ranchers the right to process their own food,” Trump said at the Friday signing.
The order would allow some smaller ranches to bypass USDA-inspected processing facilities and other middlemen, which are largely run by a few international companies that Trump derided as holding a “monopoly” over the industry.
It comes after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) petitioned the president to address major meat-packers, saying they are charging American farmers much larger premiums than overseas producers.
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Trump said the policy would allow ranchers to produce and sell meat “at the lowest prices, directly to the consumer,” but did not offer estimates of its potential effect on price tags.
As for food-safety concerns, Trump vowed that the small ranchers who choose to build their own processing facilities will face similar levels of federal regulation to those of the large processing plants licensed under current USDA rules.
“They’ll have inspectors. They’ll have everything, just like these big plants,” Trump said. “I would be willing to say that our ranches will be more sanitary than those plants. I think it’s going to be a great thing.”
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