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Then They Came for the Pork Chops Republicans’ “war on meat” pits farmers against climate advocates while big ag cashes in. BY ZOE PHARO AND PAUL BRENNAN
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or most Americans, the 2021 War on Meat was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in conservative culture-war politics, the kind typically sparked by a red Starbucks cup or the marketing of a slightly more gender-neutral Barbie doll or Mr. Potato Head. By the time Fox News announced on April 23 that a War on Meat was on—the Biden administration, Fox anchors warned, was planning to limit Americans’ red meat intake to four pounds a year, a bogus claim they lifted from a British tabloid—Iowans were already veterans. But Iowa’s war had nothing to do with the phony meat quota or even President Biden. It sprung from a cloud of feigned outrage over Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, daring to declare March 20, 2021 “MeatOut Day.” The nonbinding resolution was the sort that designates a statewide Monarch Butterfly Week or Enjoy Ice Cream Month. But MeatOut Day, an effort to promote the benefits of a plant-based diet, outraged the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and state Republicans. They declared March 20 “Meat Producers Appreciation Day” instead. That’s how things might have stayed—except Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts decided to weigh in. The GOP governor proclaimed March 20 to be “Meat on the Menu Day” in Nebraska. Gov. Kim Reynolds was a little slower to launch a counteroffensive against the Colorado MeatOut menace, but she went bigger than Ricketts. On March 19, Reynolds issued her own proclamation, declaring April to be “Meat on the Table Month” and calling upon Iowans to purchase pork and beef products to show support for farmers. Reynolds also saw a chance to raise some campaign cash, and she fired off a fundraising email that warned, “Democrats and liberal special interest groups are trying to cancel our meat industry.” The solution? Send the governor’s reelection campaign some money. Fox’s war didn’t go so well for the home team. The meat-quota story was so clearly ridiculous, the network quietly retracted it after a few days. It did have an afterlife, though: Conservatives posed as dinner table warriors on social media, posting photos of heaping plates of beef and pork. As most Republicans moved on to other culture wars, with critical race theory emerging as a favorite target, Sen. Joni Ernst (who made her childhood experience castrating hogs the center
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of her first campaign) showed up fighting a rearguard action in the War on Meat. “The Left’s War on Meat is being waged at the expense of America’s hardworking farmers and producers,” Ernst tweeted on July 10, as she introduced her latest policy proposal. The TASTEE (Telling Agencies to Stop Tweaking what Employees Eat) Act would ensure that “federal agencies can’t ban meat and other agriculture products in our government dining halls.” Ernst, who was first sworn in as a senator in 2015, created the TASTEE Act to respond to something that happened in 2012. That year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched its short-lived “Meatless Monday” initiative. In an
WHY INVENT A WAR ON MEAT WHEN YOU CAN UNITE THE NATION AROUND SUSTAINABLE FARMING? interoffice newsletter about going “greener,” the department encouraged employees to consider forgoing meat one day a week for their own health and that of the climate. Ernst frequently unveils stunt bills that don’t stand a chance of becoming law, but which seem crafted to get attention from rightwing media. TASTEE, however, landed with a thud. Ernst could only attract one cosponsor, Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican who only joined the Senate in January. Even Sen. Chuck Grassley gave it a pass, maybe because he’d already denounced the USDA Meatless Monday suggestion back in 2012. “I will eat more meat on Monday to compensate for stupid USDA recommendation abt a meatless Monday,” Grassley tweeted nine years before Ernst’s TASTEE tweet. Rhetoric in the various Wars on Meat is clownish, but it’s important to note it serves the same
function rodeo clowns do. It distracts from real problems. Consider what the USDA said in its 2012 newsletter that outraged Grassley and (eventually) Ernst. “The production of meat, especially beef (and dairy as well), has a large environmental impact,” read the newsletter. “According to the U.N., animal agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef. In addition, beef production requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides.” That’s true, and it’s surprising an adult would respond by saying, “I will eat more meat on Mondays.” Or, rather, it would be if such statements didn’t help politicians court big ag donors. The meat fearmongering has also been successful in rallying rural communities around GOP leaders. Farmers often say they feel neglected or ignored, and as stories in the media about upscale New York restaurants going meat-free and Burger King adding the Impossible Burger to its menu proliferate, and more academic studies document the environmental costs of how meat is produced—all of which can seem like threats to a farmer’s livelihood—it can be comforting to hear politicians say they’ll go to war for you. Johnson County cattle farmer Erinn Spevacek said she applauded Gov. Reynolds for Meat on the Table Month. “She didn’t give us a day or a week,” Spevacek said. “She gave us a month, and I was really proud of that, because I think it speaks volumes.” For Spevacek, who raises around 250 beef cattle using a cow-calf operation—in which a permanent herd of cows is kept to produce calves for sale—the War on Meat is “all over the place,” especially in grocery stores. For example, she sees it in deceptive food labelling that misleads consumers, such as when brands market their meat products as healthier by labelling them “antibiotic-free”—something the USDA requires of all meat sold in stores. Spevacek also sees damage being caused by outspoken opposition to concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, when that opposition argument fails to take size into account. Industrial-style CAFOs give a bad name to all farms that utilize indoor facilities, including hers, she said. “There’s actually a science to the building that
