Vilsack Goes on Offense Re: Errant Meat Consumption Reports

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USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday flatly denied there is any effort by President Joe Biden to reduce meat consumption to meet proposed 50% to 52% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 vs 2005 levels. “There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or coming out of the USDA,” Vilsack virtually told members of the North American Agricultural Journalists.

“Sometimes in the political world, games get played,” he said. “Issues get injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s no factual basis for the issue, but also knowing that someone is going to pick it up and ask about it and, all of a sudden, it becomes an issue.”

Biden's proposals didn’t include any targets for agriculture or any other sector. But a story in the conservative Daily Mail, a British news site (link), suggested that reaching the goal could require that Americans drastically reduce meat consumption by some 90% or a paltry four pounds a year. “I’m pretty sure I ate 4 pounds of red meat yesterday. That’s going to be a hard NO from me,” Donald Trump Jr. joked on Twitter feed. The Daily Mail story was quickly echoed by Fox News personalities. Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to former President Donald Trump, said on Fox Business that Americans might have to swap out meat for grilled vegetables.

Vilsack said the Biden administration has no policy papers on the meat issue. He said that while there are movements globally to reduce meat intake for health and environmental reasons, they are not being promoted by the government. “There are other efforts on your way internationally, for sure, but not in at this point in time by the administration, and not certainly at USDA,” Vilsack noted.