With the cattle industry in the spotlight, attention has been drawn to long-standing beef that some ranchers have with meatpackers over allegations of price fixing and controlling the market.
For years, several ranchers have accused the “big four” meatpacking companies — Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef — of using their market dominance to make profits while cattle producers suffer. However, others contend that the accusations are untrue and represent the free market at work. They say there is no price fixing or anything nefarious going on.
That debate has gained fresh attention as the Trump administration moves to allow more Argentine beef imports into the U.S. market.
“We’ve got four packers controlling 80% of the fed cattle market, and they’ve had this unprecedented level of concentration since the late 80s,” Bill Bullard, CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America, told the Washington Examiner.
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R-CALF USA, which has 5,000 members across 43 states, is one of the groups that have pushed back on the meatpacking industry and accused it of violating antitrust law. Bullard said the meatpackers are the “gatekeepers” to the market and have engaged in practices that have given them “tremendous buying power” over independent cattle producers.
The result of that, Bullard said, has been that the industry has lost over half of the cattle producers who were in business back in the 1980s. He said 106,000 cattle producers were lost between 2017 and 2022 alone.
President Donald Trump has been considering shipping in more Argentine beef as part of the $40 billion stimulus package he is directing toward his ally, Argentine President Javier Milei. Trump released a statement on the matter that stirred much discussion and pushback.
“The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,” the president wrote on Truth Social in response to the blowback. “If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years — Terrible!”
Responding to the message, Farm Action, a group that advocates stronger antitrust enforcement in agriculture, urged against the move and emphasized the gripes that many ranchers have with the meatpacking industry.
“These global corporations have been making record profits off U.S. consumers while squeezing independent ranchers out of business,” the group said. “Importing more beef will only make that worse.”
“You should also investigate the Big Four packers for price fixing,” the statement continued. “Two of them just settled a 2019 case after manipulating prices and cheating both ranchers and consumers. Instead of forcing cattle prices down, let’s bring beef prices down — by tackling consolidation, enforcing antitrust laws, and restoring fair competition.”
Indeed, this month, Tyson Foods and Cargill paid $55 million and $35 million, respectively, to settle a beef price-fixing lawsuit that was first filed back in 2019. The lawsuit will continue against JBS and National Beef after the other two members of the “big four” settled.
Bullard also pointed out how foreign imports to the meatpackers can hurt the U.S. cattle industry and that domestic beef is sold alongside beef sourced from abroad without labeling.
“So producers are unable to distinguish their superior product with a U.S. label in the retail market,” Bullard said, “and the packers are able to import beef from around the world and then sell that beef to unsuspecting consumers, right alongside a domestic product, and consumers can’t tell the difference.”
“That means it’s the packers who are in control of where they source their beef, and these imports have been displacing domestic production, and they have been displacing domestic cattle,” he added.
Bullard said cattle producers have little to no control over the retail price of beef, which is in the hands of the meatpackers, who are largely represented by just those four big companies.
The counter
Others argue that the claims of price fixing and collusion by ranchers don’t fit the reality of the situation.
Vincent Smith, director of agricultural policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner that while it is true that those four big companies are responsible for a lion’s share of the meatpacking in the U.S., there is no evidence that they are operating nefariously.
“There’s no real evidence of any collusion among these companies, other than assertions by the R-CALF people and some other individuals, that they collude to lower prices for producers of cattle in particular,” Smith said.
Those defending the current market structure will also point out that while beef prices are high right now, the structure has been in place for a long time, and that ups and downs are a natural part of the industry.
“So that’s been the case during good times and bad times for beef prices, and good times and bad times for cattle prices,” Glynn Tonsor, professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, told the Washington Examiner.
Those pushing back on some of these ranchers’ claims about meatpackers, despite the consolidation, contend that there is still competition between those four companies themselves.
Tonsor additionally said profit margins for meatpackers aren’t very high.
“Margins historically are very tight for packers,” he said. “I mean, there has been times they’ve been good, but long term, they are narrow compared to most things in our society. So the evidence of those accusations is thin.”
Some on both sides of the debate have pushed back on the notion that Trump’s tariffs have dramatically helped farmers, as he has said.
Bullard said cattle prices were increasing already when the tariffs kicked in, but have accelerated since April. However, despite that, he pointed out that there is little evidence that tariffs have actually deterred imports. In fact, imports for the first half of this year were up about 790 million pounds compared to that same period last year.
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Smith also pushed back on Trump’s assertion that his tariff agenda has helped cattle ranchers.
“The claim that tariffs have caused record beef prices appears to give every indication of fake news,” he said.
