Tucker Carlson Interviews Missouri Farmer Joe Maxwell (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of fourth-generation Missouri farmer Joe Maxwell’s interview: “300,000 tons of Argentine beef” on The Tucker Carlson Show, August 31, 2026.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this interview, Tucker Carlson sits down with Joe Maxwell, a fourth-generation Missouri farmer, former lieutenant governor, and president of the Farm Action Fund, to discuss the administration’s plan to import roughly 300,000 tons of Argentine beef. Maxwell contends the surge will deepen the crisis facing U.S. ranchers already squeezed by concentrated meatpacking firms, missing country-of-origin labels, and rising farm bankruptcies. The conversation also examines food-safety questions, corporate influence over agricultural policy, and whether American consumers can still reliably buy beef that is born, raised, and processed in the United States.

Argentina Beef Deal and Its Impact on American Farmers

TUCKER CARLSON: Joe Maxwell, thank you so much for doing this. The president has announced that we’re going to be importing a lot of beef from Argentina, a huge amount of beef from Argentina. And in his justification for this, he did not mention beef prices in the United States. He said we’re doing this because Argentina’s in trouble and we’re trying to help Argentina. So I think this was very confusing for a lot of people watching. What do you think is going on here?

JOE MAXWELL: Well, you’re absolutely right. The president’s actually made 2 announcements about importing beef from Argentina. The first time, which was quite a shock to all of us out here in rural America, was that he was going to quadruple the amount of beef coming in the United States. And his basis was that the people of Argentina were struggling to survive. And he liked the president.

Most recently, he has announced another 330,000 metric tons, of which he’s purchased 80,000 metric tons from Argentina again. And so we’re beginning to really dig into that and take a look at what is the real motivation. It clearly isn’t in our— we know for a fact it’s not America’s farmers and ranchers, we’re seeing the cattle market go down right after we just started making a profit. And we don’t see the results in the grocery store. Consumers still can’t afford their food.

Geopolitical Motivations Behind the Deal

TUCKER CARLSON: So I think, I mean, there are a lot of potential motives here. One is geopolitical. The president of Argentina is a close ally of, of the prime minister of Israel, unlike President Maduro, who was an opponent of— right. So that, that’s certainly a factor in this. There may be others. What would the others be?

JOE MAXWELL: Yeah. Well, first, let’s— I respect the geopolitical landscape, but we have to put America first. Farmers and ranchers, 63 farmers a day are going out of business while people can’t afford their groceries. There is a serious problem in rural America. Farmers and ranchers are in crisis, not unlike what the president described of those folks in Argentina.

So I respect that those folks may be struggling to survive, but so are America’s farmers and ranchers. So I just want to make that point, Tucker, that you got to balance that. And we don’t see that happening in the White House. What are some of the—

Why Ranchers Are Going Out of Business Despite High Meat Prices

TUCKER CARLSON: May I ask you to pause, though? Why, for those of us not in the business, why is there a crisis in ranching if meat prices are at an all-time high? When oil prices go up, the oil companies thrive. But meat prices have gone up and ranchers are going out of business. What is the problem, do you think?

JOE MAXWELL: Well, you mentioned oil companies. Our gas prices in my little town just went up again. Crude oil’s down, gas is up. Makes no sense. But the reason is, is those companies, a handful of companies, control the oil from the wellhead— well, actually from under the ground all the way to the gas pump.

With cattle and much of what farmers and ranchers raise, we’re price takers. We don’t set the price. We have to pay our inputs whatever we’re told by a handful of companies the price is. Then we hold up what we raise and say, how much will another handful of companies give us for it?

There are 4 companies that control 85% of all the cattle in the United States. 2 of them are Brazilian. And we have to ask them, how much will you give me for that? So when we see prices in the grocery store go up, there’s not a correlation that America’s farmers and ranchers are going to receive a greater benefit from that price, because in the middle, it’s so heavily concentrated between the meatpackers and the retail grocers.

4 grocery big box stores control 69% of all the groceries in the United States. So that concentration between the farmer and the consumer can cause the consumer to be price gouged on price and the farmer to be short paid for what the real value of their goods are. In this case, beef.

Corporate Concentration and the Failure of Competition

TUCKER CARLSON: That doesn’t sound like an efficient market. That’s not the capitalism I was promised.

JOE MAXWELL: Well, Tucker, I have an ag economics degree. I don’t hold myself up as an economist, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a professor at my old econ class to understand that capitalism doesn’t work if it doesn’t have the restraint of competition. Right, right. That’s one of the base fundamentals.

Now, a lot of us have been trying to get— both Democrats and Republicans have brought us to this horrible stage where a handful of companies can have so much influence over Congress and the Oval Office. And the fact is that when we try to do something to force antitrust enforcement or try to put new laws in place to modernize those, many of those were passed in the early 1900s or late 1800s.

People scream, the free market, folks who want to wrap themselves in the free market, which I hold myself out for the free market. They want to call me a socialist because I want to implement the fundamentals and make sure they’re in place, like the restraint of competition in our capitalist system. Otherwise, a handful of people get all the wealth.

We launched the Rural Independence Initiative to look to try to have these kind of conversations. It’s been both major parties have gotten us in this position. Started with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put it on steroids. And what we now see is this restraint in the market where new companies can’t even enter the market. We can’t even get new competition. Entrepreneurship is almost dead in most sectors in America.

And so we say free market and you said capitalist. I’m a capitalist. I’ve owned companies, businesses, I own a farm. But capitalism doesn’t work unless we allow competition. And both parties have eroded competition to where there isn’t any companies.

4 companies control— give you an idea on egg prices when avian flu came out. Eggs are staples. I hope most of the viewers get this. So your eggs went up 300% in the grocery store. The largest egg producer in the United States, Cal-Maine’s profits went up tenfold. The avian flu was serious. Animals died. But the fact is, they only lost about 6% to 7% of the flock. So they screamed avian flu, which gave them an excuse to hike up prices, gouge the consumer, rake in billions of dollars. One company made more money in a quarter than it made in the whole year before.

And why? Because USDA— this is kind of telling, Tucker— USDA economists came out and said, well, we see prices are way far above what they ought to be based upon the facts. We expect other people to come in and in the emerging market and or in this market and lower the price of eggs. And 4 months later, the report came and said, we’re not sure why nobody came in, but no one did because the concentration is so heavy.

You can’t get into the market with 4 companies controlling retail groceries with their sweetheart deals with the big 4 producers of any food item. You can’t get in. And it allows those companies to gouge the consumer and short pay the farmer, and they reap all the money. They’ve extracted the wealth out of rural America.

We’ve launched the Rural Independence Initiative to put aside party politics, strip yourself of party identity. Let’s roll up our sleeves and let’s work together and let’s understand that capitalism does not work without the constraint, restraint of competition.

The Rural Independence Initiative

TUCKER CARLSON: Boy, I would think you’d have the overwhelming majority of the public on your side with that initiative.

JOE MAXWELL: We sure hope so. We just launched— we are a cross-party effort. We, when we make an endorsement of a candidate, we don’t tell the public if it’s a D or an R. Or not. It should be the person, right? It ought to be that they stand up against this power, this influence in Washington, D.C. They’re willing to go toe to toe.

We endorsed Congressman Massie. Now, we didn’t win that. We worked hard. Others did, too. So did the congressman. But we’re endorsing candidates that will go toe to toe with this power and not bend to the influence in Washington, D.C.

This beef deal is really about the White House and to some degree members of Congress bending to the influence of this monopolistic oligarchy power and the influence that they have when they get market share, market power. They therefore get economic power. I talked about eggs gouging the consumers. They make billions of dollars. Then they invest that in lobbyists. And campaign contributions to— in order to stay in that power.

And so what happens is, is that that influence, then the Batista family can just walk into the Oval Office. That’s the owners of the world’s largest meatpacker, is JBS, owned by one family from Brazil. And they can walk into the Oval Office and have a sit-down. They can negotiate between the president of Brazil and the president of the United States so that those 2 can get together. That’s the power these companies and corporations and folks now have and the influence they have not only over our government but other governments. And we have to come together as a people and push back against that power.

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How the Beef Deal Came to Pass

JOE MAXWELL: I think we mentioned the geopolitical climate. Yes. There’s no doubt with the first deal last October, November, the quadrupling of the importation of beef from Argentina was because of an election in Argentina. And it wasn’t looking good for an ally of the president, someone he considers a friend. I’m not an expert on geopolitics, so I won’t say it was good to have him reelected or not. I just don’t know. But I do know that that’s a fact.

And, and therefore, we quadrupled the importation to raise and secure the economic future. Also, we gave $20 billion taxpayer money to Argentina. And we put together a banking deal with other financiers of about $20 billion, and plus this beef deal.

And, but the other thing is just the influence of JBS. JBS has plants in Argentina. It’s the influence of these large corporations. I’ll give you how does it work? JBS is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, and they have confessed to bribing up to 1,800 politicians in Brazil in order to get an increase in value of their shares, to borrow billions to invest in the United States in the meat market. And they bought beef, pork, and chicken. So they are a protein company.

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And they— in that, so the president is looking for money for his inaugural committee. Pilgrim’s Pride, which is JBS’s poultry division, gave $5 million to the Trump inaugural committee. And for years, JBS had been trying to get on the stock exchange to get publicly listed in the United States. And shortly thereafter, they got that.

Shortly thereafter, Joesley Batista, one of the— there’s 2 of them, Wesley and his brother, met with the president, and it’s reported that they talked about beef prices and Brazilian tariffs. They have had strong relationships with the president in his prior first term.

The— we had bailout money to try to help America’s farmers and ranchers. That I helped work on. The Trump 1 administration moved over $60 million of that bailout for America’s farmers to JBS to help bail them out.

There was a guy by the name of Al Almanza in 2017 under the first term. You can look this up. This is fact as it’s been reported and as the investigations, police investigations have indicated, the Brazilian police started an investigation called “Weak Meat.” And they believed that inspectors were being bribed to let tainted, rotted meat, abscessed meat out of Brazil, millions of pounds. And they discovered it was so, and they notified the world that there’s a bunch of bad meat on the market, beef market.

China, Chile, other countries within 3 days closed their ports to Brazilian beef. Again, JBS is a major beef producer in, and were tied into this investigation, along with a couple of other meat companies. And it took the US 97 days to close its border to Brazilian beef. 97 days. I always suspected— never did the research— it took about 97 days to bring in millions of pounds of rotten meat, and we were the only country that didn’t close our border. So there has been favored status.

Oh, the kicker here, Tucker, do you know where Al Almanza now works?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, he—

The Revolving Door: Big Meat, Government Regulators, and the Beef Supply Crisis

JOE MAXWELL (00:16:47 – 00:17:47): they— I laugh. It’s this bad. This is the kind of influence these big multinational companies have over our government. He got a job, the JBS S.A., that’s their South American main company, their main company. He got a job, they created it as the head of global food safety. It’s undisclosed how much they pay him, but he left USDA where he was the interim FSIS, and that’s the Food Safety Inspection Services for the United States of America that runs the inspections to let meat in or not into this country. And he turned around and went to work for the very people that had been caught along with others in Brazil, other companies in Brazil trying to move millions of pounds. And he left our borders open for 97 days in 2017.

How Can a Regulator Work for the Industry He Regulated?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:17:47 – 00:19:17): How is that— how is that legal? How, how can a U.S. government regulator leave his job and then work for the industry that he regulated? Why do we allow that?

JOE MAXWELL (00:19:18 – 00:23:30): I don’t know why we allow that, Tucker. Maybe you and I need to get together and few other folks that have similar views of, and go after both parties until they stop doing that. They— that we, we call it the revolving door. It’s very serious. It is the real— it’s just one component of the influence that these big companies have. They can walk into the Oval Office. They can walk into any U.S. senator, member of Congress office.

Unfortunately, in our opinion, based upon farm policy, the majority of Ds and Rs support what they want, not what America’s farmers want. And the other influence they have is come time for appointments, they line up their people. From the industry to get jobs within the administration and are deep-seated then into the regulatory agencies. So they’re— in the beginning, they’re appointed and they’re regulating themselves, you know, because they’ve got one of their folks inside. And then after that administration leaves, the door goes the other way. They go back home. They’re kind of like guaranteed a job. They usually get, I think, a— I’m not sure, but I’m sure they get a star or 2 to put on the refrigerator like we do at home when the kids do well and pat it on the back, you know.

And that is the amount of influence. That’s what happens when we fight for a free market and we fail to put the safeguards in place. It’s what we get when we’re distracted by so many issues that they throw at us that we all of us lose sight of what the real issues, and that is protecting our economy, protecting our rural communities, protecting the people. And instead, we start thinking it’s more serious if we aren’t protecting JBS’s future or something like that.

And, you know, they— I often joked that, you know, it didn’t matter which president presidential candidate won, D or R, because, you know, it was just a matter of which Goldman Sachs executive was going to be the head of Treasury back in the day. That’s what I would say. And if you look, that’s kind of how it worked. There really wasn’t a distinction between the parties for about 40 years as it relates to the— but they fight over things and then they let their billionaires and their monopolistic corporations, you know, rob all of us, rob the consumer at the grocery store.

They shortpay the farmer. These big meat companies have been accused and have settled. They didn’t admit they did it, but have been accused of price fixing wages. There was something called the Agri Stats system, and they shared data. So they could depress wages. So it’s not just farmers and ranchers, it’s also the workers that get short paid.

So that’s the unfortunate state that we’re in. And people are angry out here in rural America. We’re angry. We’re angry over this beef deal. We’re angry that many thought things were getting better. We were starting to make a profit, and then the president takes this course of action and plummets our market. And we know that our neighbors at the grocery store going in the grocery store and I— well, we oftentimes go in the grocery store, right? So even ourselves, we’re not going to see that, see that benefit. And based upon the record that I’ve described, Tucker, of tainted meats and inspections. And, you know, you got to wonder, know that the global beef supply is short this year compared to last year.

Why Is the Global Beef Supply Short?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:23:31 – 00:23:31): Why?

JOE MAXWELL (00:23:31 – 00:23:47): So globally, there’s less beef. I don’t know all the reasons, some of which are wet. Most are weather-related. It’s also been price-related. Farmers around the world have been underpaid.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:23:48 – 00:23:48): For.

JOE MAXWELL (00:23:49 – 00:26:00): And so if you’re going to get underpaid, you’re not going to do much of it anymore. So you start selling off your herd. So weather, short pay to farmers. And so the global supply today is, is less than last year.

Okay. So in 90 days, the president of the United States is saying we’re going to bring in to this country 700 and over 750 million pounds of beef. Now, this order for beef wasn’t anticipated. It wasn’t laying out there in the world’s global beef supply. It’s a seller’s market today, right? I mean, if, if, if, if you have goods and it’s in short supply, then why are you going to discount it 25%? The president claims, well, I bought it for 25% below the market.

Well, who in the world is going to sell something that’s in shorter supply this year than last year at a discount? Unless it’s something they can’t sell to anybody else. It has to make us ask, where are you buying this and what the world is it? Somebody is getting a benefit. I don’t have who, but based on past track records, I’d say follow the money is what I try to say.

We as people need to ask who gets the benefit from this. It’s not the farmer or rancher, cattle producer. It doesn’t appear it’s going to be the consumer. So who? It’s somebody we’re buying it from, and that’s going to sell something they can’t sell anywhere else, and they’re going to sell it in this country. It’s not just a stockpile of beef nobody wanted because we’re in— we’re in a decline on supply of beef in this world and demand is up. It’s a— it’s a seller’s market right now.

The World Economic Forum, Global Beef, and Market Concentration

TUCKER CARLSON (00:26:02 – 00:26:31): So, so many questions. I mean, you’re aware that global central planners have for some time said out loud, people eat too much beef, we need to reduce consumption of beef. They’re not hiding it. You know, famously, the World Economic Forum has had a bunch of different panels on this exact topic. Do you see a connection between that ideology, whatever it is, and the decline in global beef supply?

JOE MAXWELL (00:26:31 – 00:28:35): Yeah, I don’t think that they had to leverage their plans. I think Mother Nature has leveraged a lot of the plans and this concentration in the meat market. I do believe that it’s evidence that those plans or those meetings occurred and those conversations occurred. But what I mean, we’ve— the Western United States, as well as other areas in the world, have faced droughts. We’re facing extreme weather patterns that we’ve not faced before that caused costs to go up. And prices didn’t go up because of the concentration.

4 companies control the meat market. 4 companies. 85%. 2 of them are Brazilian. This is in beef. Pork, 4 companies control 68 to 70%. Chicken, about 68%. So it’s everywhere. But, and a lot of the same companies control all 3 proteins. But so I think it’s a product more of the concept, and these companies are global. You know, US Tyson, Cargill. It’s not just Brazilian. JBS Brazilian is the largest meat protein company in the world.

But, and they just have been shortpaying farmers all over the world. There’s riots, protests going on everywhere from India to, you know, Europe by farmers. And so that’s what I think really has put most of the strain on the market. There’s no doubt certain regulations and other things have impacted the profitability. So I don’t want to take away from that. But, but the bigger fact has just been the constraints put on by Mother Nature and, and a market that’s relentlessly controlled.

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Where Is This Beef Coming From?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:28:36 – 00:29:08): So you describe shrinking supply, rising demand, and then a president who says, somehow I found this huge cache of beef at below-market prices, and I’m gonna send it to the United States. And you made the point, I don’t know where this is coming from, but logic suggests it’s unsellable meat, and we’re getting stuck with it. So that raises the question, I think I’m fairly characterizing what you said, like, are we sure that this is fit for human consumption? Like, what’s the track record of here?

JOE MAXWELL (00:29:08 – 00:33:05): I want to make— yeah, well, track record is not good. I gave you the 2017, 97 days to close the border to tainted and abscessed meat when China, for God’s sakes, 3 days shut down their border to it. I mean, we’re always comparing ourselves to China and somehow they, they, they got it, the message in the memo, a lot quicker than Al did.

But I think that one, one of the most tragic issues— this goes to a part of your question, but I think what’s so important is to recognize is the United States does not have mandatory country of origin labeling. On beef and pork. This case is beef. I can tell you where this shirt I have on, the one you have on, comes from and was made. I can buy a dog treat, you know, tell me what country it was made in. When you go to the grocery store, it doesn’t tell you where it comes from. So this meat is— because we don’t have mandatory country of origin labeling.

Now, Senator Thune, Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, has a bill, the American Beef Labeling Act, and, and in a bipartisan vote that they voted into the Farm Bill a few Thursdays ago before they broke. The Farm Bill didn’t get through, but it was a bipartisan effort, which was very encouraging.

But it’s very— this story is very tragic. I absolutely believe that this has got to be meat somebody could— they’re not going to discount in a seller’s market. I’m a business person. Shoot, you know, if something’s in short supply, I’m not going to say, oh, I’ll give you 25% off because I don’t have enough of it. Right. So that’s just not logical. So it has to be something they couldn’t move somewhere else.

And the track record is, is that— and the president’s not saying where he’s getting it. That lack of transparency is one concern. And America’s people won’t know if it showed up in their grocery store or not.

750 Million Pounds: Putting the Numbers in Perspective

It’s a lot of beef. We throw these numbers around. I’ll try to put it into kind of perspective. On the average last year, the— I’ll get this right— the average pounds of beef imported into the United States per month last year was 447,000 pounds. Million pounds. That’s average all year. The president is going to bring this meat in in 90 days. It is 750— over 750 million pounds of meat in 90 days. That would be 250 million pounds a month more. That’s over 50% increase per month of what the average was last year of being imported. It’s a lot of beef.

So when we’re saying, you know, it’s not— so every— all the viewers need to understand there’s not— it’s that much meat. It’s not just laying around, as you said, Tucker. I mean, it’s just not laying around. It’s too big of a pile of beef. And it’s a new order. It’s not like it was in the pipeline.

So American consumers aren’t going to know where their beef comes from because we don’t have mandatory country of origin labeling. And everyone viewing this ought to call their U.S. senator and their member of Congress and the White House, because the president does not support mandatory country of origin labeling, and demand that that be passed immediately when they return. So that we can gosh darn at least know if we’re eating some of this junk that’s coming through.

Country of Origin Labeling and the Beef Industry

TUCKER CARLSON (00:33:06 – 00:34:34): What, what’s the potential or even theoretical justification for opposing labeling country of origin? Like, I don’t understand that. Yeah.

The NCBA, Packers, and the Fight Against Country of Origin Labeling

JOE MAXWELL (00:34:35 – 00:37:29): Well, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, one of the largest trade and lobbying organizations, — it represents— its members are 5% or so of U.S. cattle producers, but it also has members that are the big packers. NCBA represents itself as the voice of America’s cattle producers. The packers and the NCBA push hard to not have country of origin labeling.

We had it up until 2015, and then it got tied up into a dispute with the WTO after Mexico and Canada sued the United States in the tribunal. And there was going to be a penalty placed on the US for a restraint in trade, and the Congress got nervous and repealed it, 2015. And under the Obama administration.

So these groups say it’s going to cost too much money, it’s going to raise prices. That’s the fear tactic that they use to try to get to Congress. Everybody’s worried about affordability right now. We were talking about that on beef prices, fuel prices. I mentioned fertilizer in a minute. But, and but the reality is the truth, the politics behind it is that we just talked about it.

Two of the large— these four companies that control 85% of the beef in the United States are international. They’re importing and exporting beef all over the world. They export U.S. beef and import Brazilian beef. I mean, the same company moving it all around the world. They know that the American people— and surveys, public surveys have proven this— will pay the American farmer more money. They feel and understand it’s a safer product because there’s been so many problems in the imported world, and they’ll pay more.

And these companies don’t want to lose their ability to commingle to mix, this extra— we’re not talking about a chunk of steak or a roast, right? We’re talking about some grind or emulsified product. And they bring that into the United States and they throw it in a vat, you know, million pounds of hamburger, and they stir it all up. And they don’t want to list and track all the countries that that stuff came from that they threw in that vat.

The Disgrace of the American Food System

TUCKER CARLSON (00:37:30 – 00:37:36): Oh, come on. No, it’s so repulsive. Well, I’m just telling you, I’m having trouble hearing this.

JOE MAXWELL (00:37:36 – 00:38:55): That’s disgusting. And Tucker, I have trouble as an American farmer believing we’ve allowed the food system to get to such a state that that’s what we’re feeding the people. Right. It’s a goddamn disgrace. But that’s the reality. Of where we are.

They have so much influence that they are able to keep mandatory country of origin labeling off. Now, I commend Senator Thune. He, he’s the leader of the U.S. Senate. He is from a great state that raises cattle. It didn’t go to his head when he became a national leader. He stayed focused on a priority back home, and he delivered a great vote along with the Democrats. Hats off to them too for voting for a Republican amendment.

And they’re fighting hard, but they’re up against the wall. And every viewer should call their member of the Senate and a member of the House and the White House and demand— with the president bringing in 330,000 metric tons, which equals over 750 million pounds of beef, which is over 50% increase per month. That’s the amount that’s going to be in the grocery store. We deserve to know where it came from. Tell us on the label before we buy it.

China Bans Argentine Beef Over Banned Antibiotic

TUCKER CARLSON (00:38:57 – 00:39:17): Oh, yes. So I have read— I have no idea if it’s what’s true, which is why I’m glad you’re here— but that China had, had banned beef imports from Argentina on the basis of hormones or chemicals in the, in the meat that they believed were dangerous. Is that true?

JOE MAXWELL (00:39:18 – 00:39:19): Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:39:19 – 00:39:20): Yes. And I—

JOE MAXWELL (00:39:21 – 00:43:52): you hear the way I talk now, and I can’t pronounce the word. It’s an antibiotic. So I apologize to the listeners and viewers. But anyway, it’s an antibiotic. And if I would attempt to pronounce that, I would only further embarrass myself. So, but anyway, there is, okay, so there’s a very potent antibiotic that is used for humans when we are extremely serious and other antibiotics have failed.

The reason it’s rarely used is because it stays, its residue, the antibiotic stays in the muscle tissue for very long extended periods of time. It has been banned. Its use in livestock has been banned in Argentina, the US, China, Canada, many countries to be used in livestock because we all worry what we eat. And if it’s got just a little bit of antibiotics in it, right? Maybe you don’t, maybe the listeners don’t know.

So one of the reasons overuse of antibiotics in production livestock is a real problem is because this residue stays, which is really just the antibiotic stays, you eat it. And so you have a little bit of antibiotics in you. Well, the bug or germ that you might have that your body’s fighting gets a little sick, but it’s not enough antibiotics to kill it. Well, that little germ or virus, it mutates and becomes resistant to the antibiotic, creating antibiotic-resistant disease and illnesses.

So that’s why this one stays in the muscle tissue for a very long extended time. Very— I don’t want to use the word toxic. If you’re sick and you need this antibiotic, it’s not toxic to your body, right? It’s a good thing. You know, you got malaria. I think it’s used in malaria and some other things. So, but not in livestock because they don’t want— the folks that have banned it, the country don’t want us to have just a little bit of it because one day we may need it. And if our body and that virus or whatever has become resistant to it, then everybody— it no longer works. And we lose that great tool, that great antibiotic that’s kind of a last resort antibiotic.

So, and however, Argentina— and we’ve already talked about South American countries and tainted beef earlier— Argentina, somebody over there is using it in the production of their cattle. Note that we just brought in 80,000 metric tons, which is about a little over 17 million pounds. And China caught it. And they said, we ain’t— we’re not taking this. This antibiotic that we detected in this meat is banned from the use in livestock here. We’re not going to take meat from another country that allows that to be used. And they rejected it.

So I cannot remember. I apologize, Tucker. It was a small poundage, but they didn’t test everything. They just rejected the whole thing. So a few days later this week, the president has announced that one of the first places he’s going for his 330,000 metric tons of beef is Argentina. The first deal he struck was for 80,000 metric tons of the 330,000 will come from Argentina.

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I have no evidence, nor am I trying to make overaccusations, but it does scare the heck out of me that if, if we’re talking about 750 million pounds of beef and it’s not— we already talked, it’s not just laying around somewhere. Somebody is trying to peddle something they can’t sell elsewhere. We know Argentina has some beef they need to sell. And they— it’s a 25% discount.

So we should be asking to make sure this administration beefs back up the people that they let go, get them back in FSIS and get them on the front line. And we need to be testing to make sure that Argentina beef doesn’t have that residue in it that China found.

Is It Possible to Buy an All-American Hamburger?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:43:53 – 00:45:32): Is it, is it possible to buy an All-American hamburger in the United States?

JOE MAXWELL (00:45:33 – 00:45:34): It is.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:45:34 – 00:45:35): How?

JOE MAXWELL (00:45:36 – 00:45:40): I’ll— I, I, I think you all from Maine, is that right?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:45:40 – 00:45:40): Yeah.

JOE MAXWELL (00:45:41 – 00:45:43): I’ll get you in touch with some good farmers there.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:45:44 – 00:45:57): No, no, I mean to go for sure. And, and, yeah, you know, I obviously I, I’m not worried about meat prices. I’m blessed in that way. So, yeah, we, we eat American beef in my house, period.

JOE MAXWELL (00:45:58 – 00:45:58): Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:45:58 – 00:45:59): And we get it right.

Country of Origin Labeling and the “Product of the USA” Fight

JOE MAXWELL (00:45:59 – 00:50:53): We get normal— the regular consumer that perhaps is too far removed from the farm to be able to do that. There are a few companies. One I filed so many years ago I filed the first complaint with USDA. Okay, I don’t want people to get confused. Right now, the country does not have mandatory country of origin labeling. That’s where the government says you got to put the label in your shirt, dog treats, and also on that beef. The problem is they don’t do it on the beef now. And it should be mandatory.

But what was even more egregious or as egregious, was that companies were able to put on the label of processed meat as well as meat products in the meat case, “Product of the USA.” That term— this was changed. This was allowed beginning in George W. Bush’s administration. It was done by the administration. Every president since then had let it go along. I filed a complaint with USDA against that. And towards the end of the Biden administration, they ruled in our favor. And it was like a decade fight.

American Grassfed Association. There was a lot of us. I happened to be the guy that wrote the complaint, but Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, was a big part of it. I don’t want to leave anybody out. It wasn’t just me. I don’t want to overstate it.

But Biden agreed. And now that meat, if a company is going to voluntarily use, not mandate, but if they’re going to choose out of the goodness of their little hearts to put “Product of the USA” on meat product, it has to be born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States of America. That is now the standard for that label. It’s voluntary.

The Trump administration, while it threw out a lot of things that the Biden administration did over at USDA that we opposed, on Packers and Stockyards Act rules. One thing they did keep was that rule and have really marketed it and worked to get it out into the— out into the world, out into the marketplace.

So if you go to your grocery store, not saying you can find it, but companies can now if they are just buying beef cattle, slaughtering cattle that was born in the U.S., not those that come over from the borders. Cattle born in the U.S., raised in the U.S., slaughtered in the U.S., and processed in the U.S. They can now— that label now has meaning. And you should look for that label and you should encourage your grocery to get that meat and use that label.

FSIS is the one that does the labeling, and that is their rule now. And it was put in by a Democrat administration and maintained by Republican administration, which is always good in our view because that usually says, okay, we won that one.

You know, you can make a ground with one party and then the other party comes in and just because the politics, Tucker, and I know you know this, you live it and have for years. But it’s just crazy. We identify more as a party in America than we do as the people of America. And just because the other party wanted to do something, we naturally think it’s bad. This MAHA movement, which we— I work with and we work with many of the MAHA leaders, is an example.

But that’s what they should look for. It is available now. Not many companies are using it, but you can encourage your grocer, your restaurant to get that label. Get the companies that are doing that. They’re usually your regional, local meatpackers that are seeking that label to differentiate themselves against the JBSs and the meat case or the Tysons and the others. And it’s good for that local processor, that regional processor. It helps the farmer and the rancher. And you’re guaranteed now in America that you’re eating something from America and you’re actually benefiting the American farmer.

Argentine Beef Imports: What Will It Be Used For?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:50:54 – 00:51:08): The beef that the president’s going to import from Argentina and maybe other places, what will that be used for? Like, what percentage will go into ground beef and processed meat products? As opposed to intact meat products like steak?

JOE MAXWELL (00:51:08 – 00:53:29): It’s my understanding that the president has announced that within 2 weeks of his announcement, that he is going to have an executive order to further define what this is. From the original reporting, his statements, some of it on social media, it will be ground burger. It will be ground now. So it will not be whole muscles, as I indicated, like a roast. Or the steak, KC or T-bone or any of those. It will be the grind for what we would call out in farm country, the grind off the cattle.

What I will tell you in these plants, what is going on today is that the United States raises prime good stock cattle. But sometimes it’s too lean. They want to sell 80% hamburger, 80/20. Or 73% lean, 27% fat, of course. So they’ll bring in emulsified fat from foreign countries— I’m sorry, emulsified lean from foreign countries to add to our fat coming off of our prime cattle. Because prime means marbling, more fat. So the US raises a lot of fat. It needs lean to make the 73% or the 80% or 90% to balance that out.

You go and look at hamburger, it’ll be some percent lean, some percent fat. And the American people don’t know, but a lot of that is mixed. And so I suspect they’re bringing in lean trimmings to mix with U.S. fat as much as anything, as well as some of the emulsified out of the plants, the tailings.

What Is “Emulsified” Meat?

TUCKER CARLSON (00:53:29 – 00:53:33): What does emulsified mean in this context and what’s a tailing?

JOE MAXWELL (00:53:34 – 00:54:55): Okay, I call them tailings. I have worked in meat processing plants and maybe that’s not a good term. It’s what’s left on the table after the day’s done. Kind of, somebody standing there trimming. And so it’s— they pick it up, whatever, like they’re trimming it down, the fats off of off the brisket or something. They put it over into a hopper and the meat companies here several decades ago started running that through a, like you make a hot dog.

A hot dog is emulsified. It goes through this machine so it’s not chunks anymore. It becomes, it’s blended with fat and becomes like a slurry. Kind of like a stiff slurry. But emulsifier blends it all up, cuts it up so that there’s not any chunks or anything. So it’s not like a Polish sausage where you can find a chunk of pork every now and then. It’s like a hot dog that it’s just, you know, it’s been emulsified.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:54:57 – 00:54:58): Did you— time—

JOE MAXWELL (00:54:59 – 00:55:04): Heavily, heavily finely ground, I guess, is a way to— just a personal question.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:55:05 – 00:55:09): Did your time working in a processing plant make you more or less excited about hot dogs?

JOE MAXWELL (00:55:11 – 00:55:12): I love a good hot dog.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:55:12 – 00:55:17): I do too. I do too. I don’t know if you can deter me from that, but you’re coming close.

On American vs. Foreign Hot Dogs

JOE MAXWELL (00:55:18 – 00:56:24): Well, I will tell you, a good beef hot dog made in a good plant is a good hot dog. It’s the ability, you know, you get bad meat— I don’t know where 330,000 metric tons of beef’s coming from. It’s not coming from a good, solid US plant.

In beef, I can’t remember the statistic, but over 70% or thereabouts of those workforces are trained union shops with the UFCW. The workers are high-level trained. We have inspections in our plants. But overseas, that’s not necessarily the case in foreign countries.

And I’m not necessarily running down the road to eat a hot dog from Brazil, Argentina, or Uruguay, or someone else. But if it’s a good American hot dog, 4th of July, on the grill.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:56:28 – 00:56:28): I’m with you.

JOE MAXWELL (00:56:28 – 00:56:29): Trying to deter anybody.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:56:29 – 00:56:37): I’m with you, Joe Maxwell. I can’t think of anyone who could have explained it as well as you just did, and I’m grateful for that. Thank you very much for doing this.

JOE MAXWELL (00:56:38 – 00:56:49): Thank you for having us on, Tucker, and thank you for the— thank you for the work that you do. We appreciate you and many folks out there now that are really getting to the bottom of what’s going on, and we appreciate that very much.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:56:50 – 00:56:51): Thank you. I try and—

JOE MAXWELL (00:56:52 – 00:56:53): I know. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON (00:56:53 – 00:56:53): Thank you.

JOE MAXWELL (00:56:53 – 00:56:54): Good seeing you.