Copy of AFF Sentinel V22 #20-R-CALF’s Bullard Misleads Famous Personality
- Steve Dittmer
- Jul 22
- 4 min read
Bullard Takes Advantage of Gentleman Unfamiliar with Beef Production Chain
Steve Dittmer | AFF Sentinel
Colorado Springs, CO
Originally sent to subscribers 03/14/25
Edi. Note: The Senate passed the C.R. today. Now it goes to President Trump for signing. This avoids a government "shutdown." Now, it's on to the reconciliation process.
Bill Bullard has been busy spreading misinformation among those not familiar with the beef production chain. He wrote an article printed in the “Wisconsin State Farmer” and worse, appeared on Charles Payne’s “Making Money” program on Fox Business network, spreading wrong explanations for our industry again.
Payne’s questions and Bullard’s misleading answers, claiming that tariffs making imported beef more expensive in this country was a good thing made up much of the interview.
Our view has been that tariffs are to be used as a temporary tool but not as a permanent barrier to lean beef our consumers demand.
As usual, Bullard’s chief saw is that we have lost cattle operations over the decades. He quotes the figures that include every small operation that existed, whether cow/calf or farmer/feeder operation. In Bullard’s utopia, everyone who wanted to be in the cattle business could do so. He would repeal all the laws of economics to make it happen.
We’ve nothing against small operations. That’s often where big ones come from. But we can’t expect to go back to the business model of yesteryear and provide the product consumers want at prices they can and will pay. Size and scale keep prices at levels consumers can handle.
Bullard does not want any imported cattle or beef coming into America, if he could manage it. He fails to recognize that we are producing more beef today with fewer cows than in the 1950s. That’s like expecting us to be using the same computers today as when mainframes were ascendant in the 1970s. We don’t feed punch cards into computers now. We hold computers in our pockets.
Bullard blames the disappearance of cattle operations on imported beef. He fails to mention that nearly all the beef we import from overseas is frozen lean beef for grinding. Why? Because the American consumer demands more ground beef than we can produce in this country. All our cull cows and all the dairy cull cows make up half of the numbers of cows and bulls we used to use for grinding. And the popularity of burger chains in this country is fantastic. Ground beef is still one of the staples in the meat case because of price, flavor and versatility. Bullard doesn’t value that.
He also doesn’t put as much emphasis as should be done that drought has had the most to do with the number of cows and the number of cattle operations today, especially in the western half of the country. Hundreds of thousands of cows have “gotten wheels under them” because there just wasn’t any grass for them to eat.
Free trade has not destroyed our beef production chain, as Bullard claims. It would be harder to make money from beef cattle if we had not had the lean imported beef in decades past, especially in times of drought. The lean manufacturing beef from select, vetted countries is mixed with Choice and Prime beef trimmings to make the ground beef the consumer enjoys. The trimmings from our Choice and Prime carcasses would be worth very little without the lean beef we import to mix with it. That would make every animal sold in this country worth less and would account for hundreds of millions of dollars of foregone revenue over the years.
By now, everyone is familiar with the concept of retaliatory tariffs. The fed cattle sold in this country today are worth over $400/head more because of income derived from exporting high quality, grain-fed beef and variety meats around the world. Close off our markets to imports and much of that export market could disappear very quickly. The BSE disaster brought home to everyone very quickly important export markets were. Trade, under normal conditions, is a two-way street.
Bullard claims that imports (1.69 million metric tons ERS.USDA ) have far exceeded our exports (1.29 million metric tons, 2023; USMEF and USDA data) and foreign production has “displaced” our producers. And that’s just tonnage. It doesn’t account for the fact that the type of beef is totally different for imports vs. exports. The value of beef exports has hovered around $10 billion the last couple of years. Our imports in 2023 were worth $8.6 billion.
Then there is the issue of food security. Only the U.S. and Canada produce grain-fed beef in any quantity. That is not what we import from other countries. Bullard claims that lower wages in other countries, lower environmental standards and less stringent safety inspection standards are risks in importing beef from other countries. We purchase beef only that has been processed with USDA inspection or USDA-equivalent inspection.
Bullard said our domestic supply chain is what he claims enables beef “self sufficiency.” But we do not and cannot produce all the lean beef this country’s consumer demands. We produce high-quality, grain-fed beef. Right now we aren’t even producing as much of that as consumers would like to be able to afford, due to drought and cost pressures. But that business model does not provide for the quantities and proportion of lean manufacturing beef that America’s voracious appetite for ground beef requires.
R-CALF has fought against our beef production chain, the chain forged by the cow/calf producers, feeders, packers, retailers and food service segments over many years of hard work. It is not perfect. But continuous improvement in product quality and efforts through the beef check-off -- that R-CALF and others have striven mightily to destroy -- has created the demand we enjoy today.
Our address: Agribusiness Freedom Foundation, P.O. Box 88179, Colorado Springs, CO. 80908.
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