USDA Chief: ‘No Effort Designed to Limit People’s Intake’ of ‘Burgers’ in Joe Biden’s Climate Plans

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday the Biden administration has made no effort to reduce the consumption of beef.

“There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or USDA,” Vilsack told reporters during an event by the North American Agricultural Journalists, Politico reported.

“Sometimes in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s no factual basis,” he continued. Vilsack said:

There’s no desire, no effort, no press release, no policy paper — none of that — that would support the notion that the Biden administration is going to suggest that people eat less meat. Or that USDA has some program designed to reduce meat consumption. It’s simply not the case.

Reports circled over the weekend that President Joe Biden had plans to create a zero emissions economy by no later than 2050, which could entail reducing red meat consumption by 90 percent and animal products by 50 percent. According to Michigan University’s study from the Center for Sustainable Systems, the change would mean cutting diet-linked greenhouse gas emissions.

“To do that, it would require Americans to only consume about four pounds of red meat per year, or 0.18 ounces per day. It equates to consuming roughly one average sized burger per month, ” the Daily Mail reported.

Apparently, the Biden administration has not detailed “any specific targets for the farm industry,” which Politico says, “accounts for about 10 percent of emissions, primarily from fertilizer, livestock and manure.”

Breitbart News reported in 2018 the New York Times proposed “a special tax on the beef industry to compensate for the alleged damage Big Beef has caused to the environment by provoking climate change.”

Such a tax is supported in many countries in Europe. “Seventy percent of consumers in Germany, France and the Netherlands support a meat tax that includes environmental costs, if tax revenues are used to reduce VAT on vegetables and fruit, according to survey findings,” according to FoodNavigator.com.