Latest / REAP/SOW / Are high beef prices enough to send Dan Osborn to the U.S. Senate?
Transcript
- Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked. I'm Theodore Ross, editor-in-chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. I'm joined by my co-host Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. It's October 22nd, so buckle up, Forked fans. The midterms are less than three weeks away. One of the key fights for control of the Senate is taking place in Nebraska, where an industrial mechanic and Navy veteran named Dan Osborn is running as an independent, although you wouldn't know it if you listened to his opponent, GOP incumbent Pete Ricketts. Pete Ricketts: Democrat Dan over here. Democrat Dan's plan. Democrat Dan. Theodore: We've got Dan Osborn with us today on Forked. We're going to talk about his campaign, the power of the big four meatpacking companies, the problem with imported beef, and much more. Let's get to it. Helena, welcome back to Forked. How are you? Helena Bottemiller Evich: I'm doing well. How are you? Theodore: I'm doing well. Dan, I am so glad that you are here to talk to us all about things Forked. Before we get to that, however, I do want to mention one thing that we have upcoming. On November 4th at 6:30 PM, we're doing a live taping of Forked at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. I think, Helena, maybe you'll disagree. This is going to be the social event of the season. Helena: Totally. I'm also bringing my almost seven-year-old, Hank. Theodore: That's a surprise guest. We'll have to get him on stage. Helena: [laughs] Oh, he would like that. It's going to be a great event. Everyone should come. Theodore: I didn't mention this yet, but I will now. Our special guest for that evening is Tom Colicchio. All you Top Chef fans should come. We'll also have some comedy. Jordan Carlos, who you may know from The Colbert Report way back when, he will be there. Everybody, come. You can buy tickets on our website at www.thefern.org, or you can find the link on our Instagram page @fernnews. That is enough singing for our supper. Let's get to this. Dan, I apologize for all of that. I want to do a little bit of scene-setting before we get started. We're taping this today. It's October 20th, which means we are in the sprint toward Election Day on November 3rd. You are running as an independent, and you said you won't formally caucus with either party, although the Democratic nominee did drop out of the race to clear a pathway for you. There are a lot of issues driving the race in your state. What we're interested in at Forked is beef production and beef prices in a way that may be the most crucial. Now, Donald Trump's plan to exempt foreign beef from tariffs has drawn a lot of attention, but you have focused on the power of the big four meatpacking companies. That's Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and the biggest, JBS, for those of you keeping score at home, which control about 85% of the US meatpacking market. Helena, I will give you the first question. Helena: We're really excited to have you. I'm sorry, I'm battling a little bit of a cold. Sorry. I sound like a frog. Dan Osborn: It's that time of year. Helena: [chuckles] It is. With children, too. Thank you so much for being here. I think starting with the question of beef prices, this has been such a hot political issue. We all remember when President Trump unveiled his big deal to do 300,000 metric tons of beef tariff-free into the US, and ranchers were so angry. I've been covering ag for more than 15 years. I have never ever seen farmers and ranchers as angry as they were over this particular deal. You've been very outspoken against this move. It was supposed to be to lower beef prices for consumers. What are you saying on the campaign trail about this? What are you hearing from people? What is the vibe right now? Dan: I could start with the beef deal. You're absolutely right. Ranchers were up in arms. Ranchers, finally, over the last year or two, started to make some money themselves. They were getting what they deserved for a head and their herd. Now, of course, you have the meat packers. Enter the meat packers. When these foreign beef comes across the border, it goes to the packer, which they take the wrapping off from wherever country it comes from. They inspect it, maybe recut it, and put it in another package that says USDA on it. A lot of people don't know where their meat is even coming from. JBS is Brazilian-owned. In fact, the two brothers that own it were the largest donors to President Trump's inauguration, so there you have it. Money in politics, right? Theodore: That's a shocking fact. I think a lot of people don't know that, and they also don't know that the IPO for JBS went forward not long after the inauguration and after that donation. It's important to point out. Dan: Yes. It's a pay-to-play world that we live in, unfortunately. Tyson just paid out two lawsuits of over $80 million a piece for price fixing. They work with, say, JBS. They locate different plants where they can shut it down to continue to dictate to the producer what they give, and then all the way to the grocery store, what we pay. They've vertically integrated the entire meatpacking system. They own every step of the process. I took an antitrust lawyer out with me to Lexington, Nebraska, where they closed the plant. At Thanksgiving last year, they announced they were going to shut down the Tyson plant. 3,500 jobs gone. Then they weren't going to put it up for sale to a competitor. The antitrust lawyer I took with me accused Tyson of breaking the law, specifically the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, put forth by Woodrow Wilson, who Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were instrumental in breaking up the packers back then. That prompted my opponent to come out and say, "Well, I'm a senator. I'm going to look into this." Of course, the day after that, according to the Federal Election Commission reports, Tyson donated to his campaign, and of course, didn't find any wrongdoing, so here we are. Again, this pay-to-play world that we're stuck in. I think ultimately, if we want to bring down beef costs, we've got to break up the packers once again. Theodore: Let's talk about breaking up the packers because I think that's a big point. It's something you say is a big part of your campaign. You're in favor of breaking up the packers, but that's also something that Donald Trump, the DOJ, the USDA, along with a slew of Democratic politicians, they've all talked about doing it too, but they haven't done it yet. How would you build a coalition around this idea to actually get something done on this particular issue? Dan: I think we've got to bring the ranchers into the room, like have a co-op of ranchers, and then, alongside being able to pass the PRIME Act, which would allow ranchers to start to form their own individual meat lockers that people around regions can go and buy to. I think the key lies in, first, we have to rebuild our herds. We all know that's very important. We've got to leave our ranchers alone to do it because they're the ones who know how to do it. We need to give them what they need to continue to rebuild the herds into the future, but also, again, pass the PRIME Act. That allows individual lockers to pop up, be inspected by the USDA, make sure, obviously, people aren't going to get sick. That's first and foremost, and allow them to operate, because competition is what brings down costs. Theodore: I want to move on from there to talk about something that your opponent, Pete Ricketts, did. This was on October 12th. He released what he calls the Rebuilding the American Cattle Herd Plan. From my reading of it, and I'd like you to react to it, it's a carbon copy of your positions. Is that right? Dan: Yes. I have a six-point growth and fairness plan on my website that I've had on there for a long time, and he's more or less copied and pasted. Helena: It could have been an AI agent that copied it. [laughter] Dan: It could be. Theodore: That's possible. Helena: For the staff. I don't know. Theodore: That's true. Helena: I have no idea. I'm just wondering. Dan: It could be, but the entity that benefits the most from his nine-point plan to fix everything is sustainable beef, which happens to be his investment, as well as Walmart. All it does is it reconsolidates the industry around Walmart instead of the packers. Theodore: Let's talk a little bit more about that plan. Despite its flaws, from your perspective, it won Ricketts the endorsement of the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association. Why aren't they supporting you? Dan: That's an excellent question. Theodore: Thank you. I try. Dan: My guess is, it's like the Farmers Bureau versus the Farmers Union. The Farmers Union is always going to be on the side of the individual farmer, the small family farms. The Farmers Bureau is more going to be on the side of the corporate farms because that's where their money comes from. That's who they support. They work for them. They work for the corporations. Farmers Union works for the actual farmers that are toiling in the soil. My guess is, without knowing 100%, but my guess is the cattlemen that endorse Ricketts are also on the side of the meatpackers, the corporate side of ranching. Theodore: It could also, and I'm curious what you think about. This as a theme of your campaign as well. You're running as an independent. Pete Ricketts, I think, likes to call you Democrat Dan. These are one of the challenges as a non-Republican in a state like Nebraska of running for office. Do you think it's because you're not a Republican? Dan: Yes. Nebraska's been Republican on the federal side, on the federal delegation, for over 20 years. That's been the struggle, being an independent, especially against somebody like Pete Ricketts, whose family has $8 billion. So far in this race, they've spent $50 million just trying to identify me as such. It's my job to cut through all that noise and let people know who I am. If you don't have a letter next to your name, people have to learn about you, which I like that. I wish our politics were more like that, where people would learn more about the candidate than just their party. That's been the difficult part, but so far, we're doing really well. We're right there. We're a point ahead. I run this campaign like old-school Nebraska football in the '90s. We just run it right at you, run it up the middle. So far, it's working out. Helena: I want to talk to you briefly, zooming out. I heard, like I said, so much anger from farmers and ranchers about the beef deal in particular, but also, I think, diesel prices being double what they were last harvest season. It's inescapable. I think this is the most expensive crop that's been put in the ground. There's just so much cost. Input costs are up, prices are up for consumers. People are angry. Even Senator Marshall in Kansas is now in trouble in his race, which is wild. No one saw that coming. There's a lot of anger, and yet I'm wondering what you're hearing from farmers and ranchers in particular. Are any of them breaking with the president over this? Are they breaking with Republicans? Is there enough anger about these high costs, these deals that they see as corrupt at worst and a bad look at best? Is there enough anger for people to actually break from the Republican Party? Is that what you're hearing? Is that what you're seeing? Dan: Yes, it absolutely is. I talk to people every day that said they voted for Trump three times and they're going to vote for me, or they're simply going to sit it out because they're too upset. Helena: They're done. Dan: Yes. They're so jaded by politics altogether. They're like, "Man, the Democrats say they're going to do this, the Republicans are going to say they'll do this, and nobody ever does anything that helps us out, definitely in the farming and ranching industry." I think the tipping point has been the war in Iran because it's brought up costs in real time. These guys who were getting ready to buy fertilizer, if they didn't put their fertilizer order in pre-war, they got killed. One guy farms 2,000 acres. He said he had to write a check for $50,000 more than if he would have put in his order pre-war. Then you add in fuel costs. Anybody putting diesel in a John Deere or a Dually right now, they're paying for it. This is at a time when, in 2025, because we haven't passed a farm bill and bad sweeping tariff policy or blanket tariff policy, they lost a lot of markets. They lost markets with USAID getting chainsawed. In 2025, bankruptcies for small family farms were up 46%. The farmers union president I was talking to, his name is John Hansen. He said that it's going to double this year. Theodore: I'm going to change gears a little bit to another hot-button topic I think that Americans are focused on, and it is immigration. In the meatpacking industry, about a third of US meatpacking workers are foreign-born. From my perspective, the likelihood of American workers coming back to work in meatpacking plants seems pretty remote. That leaves undocumented workers or workers on visas, like temporary protected status, which Donald Trump canceled, and that affects a lot of meatpacking workers in places like Somalia and Haiti. Are you in favor of restoring temporary protected status in this way, even if that means giving up jobs that could go to American-born workers? Do you see that as an admission of defeat, or it's something you want to do? Dan: I think we need a reset. Since I've been alive, I'm 51. I know I don't look like it. [chuckles] Theodore: You look about 28, I'd say. I'll put you up. I'll put you at 28. Dan: Yes. I think we haven't had any comprehensive, humane immigration reform since I've been alive. Look, I was watching, I was doomscrolling, guilty. In my feed, a debate between Ronald Reagan and George Bush came up, and they were talking about immigration. They were talking about immigration more or less like the Democrats do these days in their debate. The reality is nothing has ever gotten done. You've got to ask why. I think there's two reasons. First of all, people want to use those to generate fear of immigrants so they can continue to win elections. If you divide people over this issue, you can try to win elections off of it. B, companies like JBS and Tyson, they're the ones exploiting the labor. They continue to enrich themselves, report record profits quarter after quarter. They're the ones who donate to political campaigns, that these guys aren't voting for immigration packages. I think we need to get the right people in the room. We need to get corporations in the room. We need to get small business owners in the room. We need to get labor unions in the room. We need to get immigration judges, lawyers, and immigration advocates in the room to hash this out and get it done because we don't want to undercut American workers, first and foremost, and then we want to just elevate wages for everybody across the board. Then have an opportunity for people to come here for the American dream. We've always been about, and there's room for workers to do that. This needs to get done. Farm bills need to get done. We're stuck in a two-party doom loop where neither side wants either side to have a win. I feel like that's hopefully where I can come in as an independent that's not beholden to a party boss. That hopefully, we could get the right people in the room, get this hashed out, and get it done and solved. Helena: Can I interject really quick? Dan: Yes, go ahead. Helena: On that note, I'm curious, what are you seeing in Nebraska? Have you seen ICE and immigration enforcement lay off agriculture compared to what you thought, compared to other industries, or is the fear pretty pervasive regardless of industry? I think, particularly in the first Trump administration, there was an understanding, like they were not going to go after agriculture, but we've seen some examples where that's changed. I'm curious what you've seen in Nebraska while we're on it. Theodore: Especially early on. Are you still seeing it now? Dan: Yes, we've had some meatpacking houses get raided early on. Helena: Has that slowed down? I know in Kansas, they just had a big raid there that was very unpopular, but has it shifted at all? Dan: It slowed down a little bit for that one particular company. They seem to pick on one and not the others, for some reason. I'm guessing that's a pay-to-play thing. Also, row crop farmers, they don't really need a ton of labor because it's mostly done off equipment. Helena: Incredibly efficient, yes. Dan: Yes. That's the majority in Nebraska. There's not a whole lot of things that need to be picked, but certainly, on ranches, folks need help. A few of the ranchers that I have talked to are struggling to find help. People that they had help stopped showing up to work, probably because they were afraid. There's definitely room for improvement here. Theodore: I want to stick with the issue of foreign-born workers. Nebraska is a big agricultural state, obviously. It ranks, I think, 15th in the country in the number of people on H-2A visas, which is a visa for temporary farm workers. Are you in favor of expanding the H-2A program? If you are, what about making sure that it's reformed so that we're not interjecting more abuse into what is already a highly abusive system? Dan: Yes. I'm definitely in favor of reforming it in the fact that folks come here legally to work, and then they get stuck in a broken system. If it takes longer than six years to get some permanent work status here, that's a problem. Again, we need more judges and lawyers, a process that's streamlined. The majority of people I talk to across Nebraska, the vast majority, they're not anti-immigration. They're not anti-immigrants. They just want to see it done the right way. We just want to know our neighborhoods are going to stay safe. We're not letting violent criminals come up here. If you listen to this current administration, you'll think they're letting out all the insane asylums and prisons and just dumping them into the country, but it is a matter of a vetting process so our neighborhoods stay safe, and it's as simple as that for most people. Helena: I want to ask you about something that maybe is not a hot issue or a hot debate in Nebraska, or maybe it is. You can surprise me, but I want to ask you about the Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA. We've talked a lot on this podcast about the alliance between MAHA and MAGA and how a lot of the MAHA ideas of more limits on pesticides, more limits on food additives. A lot of the food and ag stuff is really popular and polls really well. Of course, it's also tied into a lot of medical freedom and anti-vaccine sentiment that is much more polarizing, but on the food and ag side, are you hearing much about MAHA? What do you think about it? It's more of a factor, I think, here in Washington. If you come to the Senate, you'll have a Trump administration that has a MAHA agenda. What do you think about all this? What do you make of it? Dan: I think the most people I talk to, they don't talk about MAHA really at all, except for the fact that you look at the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania. I would suppose most people, when they think of MAHA, think about vaccinations. As far as me goes and food additives and stuff like that, trying to get the stuff that we know is not good for us out of food, that's a no-brainer. My wife and I, we did one of those international trading deals where you could trade. You go to the grocery store and buy what you normally buy, and then ship it over to, say, Australia or England, and then they do the same and ship a grocery. [crosstalk] Theodore: Really? I've never heard of that. Helena: I've never heard of this either, but now I want to do it. Theodore: That's really interesting. I want to do that, yes. Dan: It was pretty cool. When we got our stuff from Australia, like a box of mac and cheese, there's three ingredients in it. They don't add all this crazy stuff to make it colorful, and the box was bland. That was the vast majority of the food that they sent us from Australia. I was like, "Dang, this is cool," and it tasted great, it tasted just fine. You find yourself having to add a little bit of salt in it, too, because everything we have is so dang salty. Made you realize how much salt you put in the food, but it was good food. I can only imagine them opening our box, going, "What the heck is this?" Then, I know, I worked at Kellogg's for a lot of years. The red dye, they had changed into a natural red dye, which was very expensive for Kellogg's to do, but once it was done, it's definitely better for people. I think that healthier side, organic side of food, people love that idea, but the vaccines, people are freaked out about that. Helena: Yes. In a nutshell. Theodore: Yes. I think that's pretty good to [unintelligible]. Helena: MAHA, it's complicated, yes. Dan: Yes. It's definitely more complicated than that. Helena: Yes, I think that that's right, though. I think the average person not paying attention would associate those two things. Theodore: Dan, for our last part of the show, we like to do something called a Good Vibe. It's something in the food, politics, and policy world that we can take a little bit of a positive note from. I wonder if you have something you'd like to share. Dan: Yes. Chili dogs. It's fall, it's football, it's chili dogs season. [laughs] Theodore: All right. Yes. Dan: No, I'm kidding. Helena: I was like, "That's solid. That's fair." Theodore: I thought that's good. That's good. I have nothing against chili dogs. Dan: I'm kidding, but not kidding. [laughter] I do love a good chili dog. Helena: Straight from MAHA to chili dogs. Dan: When I'm watching football games. I think what so many people are concerned with right now, and people are learning about that they didn't know before, is Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, or MCOOL. We deserve to know where our food is coming from. Especially here in Nebraska, we're first in beef. We have the Sandhills here, where the cattle graze, and it creates some of the best beef in the world. Our ranchers deserve to have Nebraska, or at very least, America on the package to help the industry bring them a premium for what they do. Let the consumer choose. If you want to choose the Argentinian beef to save a buck, go for it. At the end of the day, no matter what food source it is, especially Kellogg's. Kellogg's makes boxes of cereal in Mexico and brings them up here, and you wouldn't know it. I know it because I know how to read the stamp on the top of the box, because I work there, but otherwise, how would you know? People deserve to know where their food is coming from, and more and more people are learning about it and going to advocate for it. Theodore: I like that Good Vibe. Helena, do you have something? Helena: Yes, I do. It's a magazine story that I'm in the middle of right now, and it's so interesting. It's called The Chocolate Conspiracy in New York Magazine. Have you read it? Theodore: Yes, I was reading it this morning. Yes, that's great. Helena: I can't wait to finish it. It is a wild ride. Basically, it starts out with this. The anger over Reese's Peanut Butter Cups not tasting the same, or Reese's chocolates not tasting the same as they used to. Theodore: From the grandson of the inventor of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Dan: They've gotten smaller, too. Helena: Yes. It's basically this deep dive into the [beep] of everything. Is that a swear word if we say it the whole way? Theodore: We're going to have to bleep you, Helena. I'm sorry. Helena: It's this parallel example of how a lot of different products are slowly changing their recipes to be cheaper over time, hoping we won't notice, and people feel like they're being gaslit, and they're like, "I knew it. I knew it was different." It's this fascinating, it's like a month-long investigation into chocolate. I haven't finished it yet, but it's a very fun read. Theodore: I know you have a lot to do, Dan, but if you have a second, I would read that article. It's a good article. Dan: Yes. Theodore: I'll do mine. It is also a piece of journalism. It is from POLITICO. I have three kids. We eat a lot of eggs, and this is a story about how there was, in fact, apparently, collusion in the egg market over prices when they spiked a couple of years ago, and that we weren't all just imagining it, and it wasn't just supply and demand; it was, in fact, large egg companies gaming the system to their advantage. One of the little things that came up in that piece, for those of us who are interested in the meatpacking industry, is one of the larger egg companies that was involved in this scheme, they are now owned by JBS. Helena: Oh. The conspiracy theorists, every once in a while, they're correct. Theodore: Exactly, yes. Dan: Oh, I want to bring up, too, if we got another second. Theodore: Yes, please. Dan: Going down the grocery aisle, I hardly buy any premium steak anymore, because it's just too unaffordable. Helena: It's crazy. Dan: This was a few weeks ago. I was walking down, and I saw the price. I was like, "Oh, man, something happened." It just came way down. Instead, what they had done is they were selling it by the half a pound now instead of 8 ounces, instead of 16 ounces, so it looks like it's half the money, but you're only getting half the steak. I was like, "Oh, man." Theodore: It's a lot of sticker shock out there in the grocery store now, for me. Dan: It is. Theodore: It is. For real. Helena: The shrinkflation, you've got to be on high alert for that. Dan: Yes. Maybe it'll help me lose a couple of pounds, I guess, at the end of the day. Theodore: [chuckles] We could all use that. I should only speak for myself. Maybe I could use that. Dan, thank you very much for coming in, spending this time, and talking with us about all these issues. Helena, as always, it's great talking to you. Why don't you tell folks out there a little bit about your newsletter, Helena? Helena: Yes. If you're not reading it, go to foodfix.co or Google Food Fix Newsletter and get on the list. You can read it for free every Friday. Obviously, we'll be covering the midterms and everything coming up, so get on the list. Theodore: Thanks again, Dan. Dan: Yes. Thank you. Helena: Thanks. Theodore: All right, everyone, don't forget, Forked Live, 11/4, day after the midterms. Come on, get your tickets. Helena: Do it. [music] Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskawy. Our sound engineer is Cody Nelson. Our producers are Celine Glasier and Milla Douer. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich and me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent, non-profit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. [END OF AUDIO]