When former President Donald Trump publicly called for a federal investigation into the nation’s largest beef processors on November 6, 2025, it set off a flurry of reactions across the political spectrum and the beef industry. The announcement, targeting the so-called “Big Four” packers—Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS USA—put a spotlight on long-standing concerns about competition, price fixing, and the power dynamics shaping America’s dinner tables.
Trump’s request, delivered via his social media platform, was direct: he asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether these companies engaged in “illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.” The timing wasn’t lost on industry watchers or politicians, coming amid widespread frustration about the soaring cost of beef in grocery stores and persistent struggles among American cattle ranchers.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a longtime advocate for stricter oversight of meatpacking consolidation, was quick to respond. According to Meatingplace, Warren welcomed Trump’s shift on the issue, but she didn’t mince words about what she hoped would come next. “I’m glad Donald Trump is on board with my years-long bipartisan push to investigate and crack down on anticompetitive practices in the beef-packing industry,” Warren stated. “While Americans are struggling with sky-high grocery prices that only keep going up, I hope Trump plans to follow up his Truth Social posts with real action to cut costs for families, support American cattle ranchers, and break up Big Ag.”
Warren’s comments captured a sense of cautious optimism, but also skepticism—after all, political rhetoric around food prices and corporate consolidation is nothing new. Yet, the fact that a former president and a progressive senator were now publicly aligned on the need for federal scrutiny marked a notable moment in the ongoing debate over the future of the U.S. beef industry.
For cattle producers and advocacy groups, the stakes are high and the frustrations are deeply rooted. As AgriTalk reported, concentration in the beef processing sector has been a hot-button issue for years. R-CALF, an organization representing independent cattle producers, has spent nearly two decades fighting what it calls a “meat-packing monopoly.” The group’s CEO, Bill Bullard, didn’t hesitate to link Trump’s announcement to their own long-standing legal battle.
“We have alleged that the meat packers had unlawfully colluded in order to artificially depress cattle prices, while at the same time raising or inflating the price of beef to the consumers,” Bullard explained. He pointed out that 85% of the U.S. beef packing industry is controlled by just four companies—a level of concentration he says is in clear violation of antitrust law. “Both the producers on the beginning of the supply chain and consumers at the end of the supply chain were exploited as a result of this monopolistic marketing structure that we have in the cattle industry and beef industry today.”
For many in the industry, the numbers are stark. The “Big Four” dominate the market, leaving smaller ranchers and processors struggling to compete. The result, according to Bullard and others, is a system where independent producers are squeezed on one end, while consumers face sticker shock at the supermarket.
But is it really collusion and monopoly power driving high beef prices, or is something else at play? Some industry voices have suggested that supply and demand—especially the historic low in the cattle herd due to drought—are the real culprits. Bullard, however, isn’t buying it. “It wasn’t until the economic shock, that straw that broke the camel’s back, that our cattle prices started to chase those beef prices upward,” he said. He argues that the recent spikes in consumer prices cannot be explained away by market forces alone.
Adding another layer to the debate, Bullard pointed to financial statements from JBS, one of the Big Four, which reported nearly $300 million in losses in the second quarter of 2025. Some have cited these losses as evidence that packers aren’t profiting from high consumer prices. Bullard remains skeptical, suggesting that “perhaps some of the losses that they made on their slaughtering side were made up from the margins of buying cheaper imports and passing it off to unsuspecting consumers as if it were a domestic product.”
The call for a new DOJ investigation isn’t the first time federal authorities have looked into the beef packing industry. The DOJ previously investigated packers in 2019 after a major plant fire in Holcomb, Kansas, and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, when beef prices for consumers soared even as cattle producers received record-low prices. According to Bullard, these investigations are ongoing, and Trump’s recent announcement could be the push needed to bring about real enforcement action.
“It’s our understanding or belief that the investigations that were first started under Trump administration one are continuing today,” Bullard told AgriTalk. “So the President’s recent announcement, I think, will encourage and incentivize the Justice Department to culminate their investigation and actually take enforcement action in order to protect independent cattle producers and consumers alike.”
What would enforcement look like? Bullard and R-CALF are hoping for a lawsuit that would allege violations of the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and Packers and Stockyards Act—key pieces of U.S. antitrust and agricultural law. The ultimate goal, he says, is to break up the Big Four’s dominance and restore competition to the marketplace. “We’re hopeful that’s what we’ll see, we’ll see the Department of Justice actually file a lawsuit, alleging the beef packers have violated the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and Packers and Stockyards Act, to the detriment of independent producers and U.S. consumers.”
For now, the industry waits. R-CALF’s lawsuit has been in the pipeline for 18 years, and Bullard admits they’ve been waiting six years just to have their case heard in court. But with renewed attention from both a former president and a leading senator, there’s a sense that change—however slow—may finally be on the horizon.
The beef industry’s future hangs in the balance, shaped by legal battles, political alliances, and the ever-present tension between big business and the independent producers who supply America’s tables. Whether the DOJ will take decisive action, and what that action might look like, remains to be seen. But for families facing high grocery bills and ranchers fighting to stay afloat, this latest chapter in the beef wars is one to watch closely.
