Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, argued in a Monday New York Times opinion article that Americans receive country-of-origin and material information for products ranging from Gap T-shirts to cars, refrigerators, televisions, apples, and frozen peas. Beef and pork are exceptions, however, after Congress repealed mandatory country-of-origin labeling for those products in December 2015.

That lack of labeling has drawn renewed attention after Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation allowing roughly 660 million pounds of foreign beef to enter the United States without inspection or the usual 26.4 percent out-of-quota tariff. The proclamation placed the entire 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef in the “other countries” quota category, which Brazil dominates, according to the article. The dispute therefore involves two separate questions for consumers: how imported beef is inspected and whether its country of origin can be identified at the point of purchase.

Schlosser wrote that consumers may not know where the imported meat comes from. His concerns emerged as Axios reported that the Food and Drug Administration had reached a record 19 simultaneous foodborne-illness outbreak investigations involving products including infant formula and jalapeños. A Cornell economist told Axios that the U.S. food-safety system “has gotten hit so hard over the last year and a half.”

Schlosser also wrote that some of the beef entering the United States could have been frozen overseas for years before being blended with fattier American meat in large industrial grinders. Trump has not disclosed the meat’s country of origin, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said she was “not privy” to that information.

The article cited several food-safety concerns involving foreign meat. Uruguayan beef was recently found to contain an outlawed antiparasitic drug, while Argentine beef has repeatedly tested positive for a banned antibiotic that can cause nerve damage. In 2017, Brazilian federal police raided nearly 200 meatpacking plants over allegations that inspectors and politicians had been bribed to allow rotten meat—chemically treated to conceal its smell—to be sold to schools and hospitals and exported abroad.

The Wall Street Journal reported that on August 20, Joesley Batista, the Brazilian billionaire who co-controls JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, met privately with Trump in the Oval Office and argued for removing the tariff on Brazilian beef. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan also reported in their book that Batista’s longtime friendship with Melania Trump helped facilitate meetings between Batista and Trump. The following day, Trump announced his “bring in the meat” plan on his social-media platform.

Batista and his brother admitted in 2017 to bribing roughly 1,800 Brazilian officials so they would not inspect the brothers’ meat products. During Trump’s first term, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department fined the brothers and their companies $280 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The penalties partly concerned alleged bribery in the United States connected to their takeover of Pilgrim’s Pride, the American chicken producer.

The SEC described the conduct as a “profound failure” of corporate governance and blocked JBS from listing on the New York Stock Exchange for nearly a decade. Pilgrim’s Pride later donated $5 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, reportedly the largest corporate contribution and five times the amount donated by Amazon or Meta. Trump subsequently suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against JBS.

Two days after the donation became public, Trump’s SEC approved JBS’s stock-market listing. The company began trading on the NYSE in June. Senator Elizabeth Warren has questioned the relationship between the donation, the regulatory decisions, and the company’s access to the Oval Office. Her office published a letter concerning the Pilgrim’s Pride donation.

The debate takes place against the backdrop of the U.S. food-safety system created after Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry. President Theodore Roosevelt sent investigators to examine the facilities. Their findings supported the creation of federal meat inspection requirements. Roosevelt signed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act on the same day, establishing the foundation for the USDA inspection system and, eventually, the FDA.

In 2008, Congress added mandatory country-of-origin labels for meat. In December 2015, Congress repealed the requirements for beef and pork by including the repeal in a 2,000-page omnibus spending bill. Chicken and lamb continue to carry country-of-origin labels, but hamburger generally does not. A Forbes report described the repeal and its legislative history.

The article also criticized recent changes at federal health agencies under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary. In April of the previous year, Kennedy announced 10,000 layoffs across federal health agencies, including 3,500 positions at the FDA. The Associated Press reported that the affected employees included laboratory scientists who test food samples for contamination and communications specialists who notify the public about food-safety recalls.

The FDA’s proposed budget would shift routine food inspections from federal authorities to the states while cutting the agency’s field-laboratory operations by more than half. At the same time, federal grants that currently help fund state inspections face cuts approaching 60 percent under a Republican-controlled Congress. Before the cuts began, the FDA had 443 food inspectors overseeing 36,600 facilities, according to the article.

The effects are reflected in the agency’s ability to identify the sources of outbreaks. In 2024, during the Biden administration, the FDA identified the source of 77 percent of the outbreaks it investigated. In 2025, during the Trump administration, that figure fell to 36 percent.

A separate traceability rule was intended to help federal regulators trace contaminated foods such as lettuce and eggs to their sources within hours rather than weeks. Congress created the legal framework in 2011, and the FDA completed the rule for implementation in 2022. It was scheduled to take effect automatically in January.

After opposition from the grocery industry, the FDA under Kennedy delayed the rule by 30 months, until July 2028. Republicans in Congress also added a provision barring the agency from spending money to enforce it before that date. The July 2028 implementation date is therefore a concrete point for monitoring how Congress and federal agencies handle food-traceability requirements. The FDA’s official page on the Food Safety Modernization Act traceability rule outlines the rule’s requirements.

Foodborne-illness figures cited in the article represent reported cases and therefore may undercount the total number of infections. As of the previous week, a Cyclospora outbreak discussed in July had grown to more than 18,000 confirmed cases across 49 states, with 990 hospitalizations and two deaths.

Food-safety oversight also covers chemical contamination. The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration had delayed for nearly two years an Environmental Protection Agency investigation into which industries were discharging toxic PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” into rivers and streams. The investigation also examines how much treated sewage sludge containing PFAS is spread as fertilizer on farms and could enter the food supply. The AP report described the stalled survey.

The article characterized these developments as part of a broader 45-year history of Republican deregulation and opposition to expanded government oversight. It argued that food-safety failures have consequences unlike failures in consumer electronics: when a television stops working, consumers can replace it, but when food-safety systems fail, people can become ill and require hospitalization.

It concluded by urging readers to contact their senators and representatives through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. The requested actions were restoration of mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef and pork, reversal of FDA food-safety cuts, and funding for the traceability rule before its currently scheduled implementation in 2028.