U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her Ranchers First Initiative to Rebuild the Great American Beef Herd. The initiative builds on the Secretary’s October 2025 Plan to Fortify the American Beef Industry. The new announcement describes government programs to incentivize heifer replacement, assist in wildfire and other disaster event recoveries, support and strengthen small and regional slaughtering facilities, and support new farmers and ranchers. In addition, the announcement describes an effort to prioritize federal procurement of locally processed American beef by encouraging purchases by federal and state institutions.
Responding to the Secretary’s initiative, R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard issued the following statement:
“Together, today’s and the earlier October initiative begin to address the symptomatic fallout from decades of failed trade and market protection policies, but fall short of reversing the underlying policies that caused the serious and ongoing erosion of the U.S. cattle industry.
“We recognize the Secretary’s initiatives as important steps toward reinforcing an ailing cattle industry against the policy‑driven forces that suppress marketplace competition, enable foreign capture of domestic supply chains, and erode market transparency—pressures that collectively undermine the confidence and long‑term viability of American ranchers.
“We look forward to working with the Administration and Congress to reverse those policy-driven forces through such policy reforms as restoring mandatory country of origin labeling for beef, eliminating the beef packers’ anticompetitive buying practices, managing trade through effective import controls, and ending the massive beef checkoff progr
