The Meat Import Council of America (MICA) is the industry organization dedicated to promoting and facilitating the trade of wholesome imported meat and meat products into the United States. MICA represents members throughout an extremely diverse supply chain that combines to create and maintain thousands of jobs throughout the United States. MICA members invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually towards U.S. infrastructure and workforce development in a wide range of sectors such as manufacturing, transportation, shipping, and storage.
Imported Beef: The Facts
U.S. cattle ranchers are without a doubt amongst the world’s best at specializing in producing high quality, well-marbled beef in high quantities that is enjoyed both domestically and throughout the world. This achievement should be celebrated. However, despite being one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of beef, there remains a significant shortage in the U.S. of very specific types of beef - namely lean beef trim - which is a vital component in the roughly 50 billion hamburgers enjoyed by U.S. consumers every year.
Accordingly, the vast majority of beef that is imported to the U.S. arrives in the form of “lean trim” (often referred to as manufacturing trim) to make up for the domestic U.S. supply shortfalls. This “lean trim” is combined (or ground) by U.S. processors with domestically-produced beef trimmings that have a much higher fat content, resulting in the perfect hamburger and other ground beef products that Americans love to eat. Imported lean beef contributed to the $15.3 billion of ground beef purchased by U.S. consumers in 2024, an increase of 10% from 2023 (Power of Meat, 2024).
As the industry-funded United States Cattlemen’s Beef Board remarks “in order to meet that domestic demand for inexpensive fast-food hamburgers we need to import beef.” This has become even more essential with the recent decline in the number of animals in the U.S. cattle herd. Currently, the U.S. cattle herd is at 70-year lows due to drought, which has reduced pasture and fodder crop production, and natural cattle production cycles. As a result, U.S. beef production is down and forecasted to stay down until 2027 or later. This makes imports critical to meeting consumer demand and supporting food service and retail businesses today and into the future.
Economic analysis further shows that U.S. ranchers benefit significantly from imported beef due to the value added to domestic U.S. carcasses as a result of the utilization of the domestic fat trimmings that would otherwise have lesser value. Imported beef also allows the U.S. beef industry to ship high-value cuts overseas, netting higher returns for U.S. cattle producers while keeping supplies stable and available to U.S. consumers.
While beef has been imported into the U.S. for decades, it only makes up approximately 10% of the overall U.S. beef supply. But without imported lean trim, the U.S. beef supply would run far short of the lean ground beef required to meet American consumer demand, resulting in grinding of higher value cuts that would only lead to a reduction in the overall value of U.S. cattle production.
Imported beef also contributes significantly to the funds generated within the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (aka the “Beef Checkoff”). As required by law, importers of beef must pay an assessment equivalent to that contributed by U.S. ranchers to this research and promotion program that benefits the cattle and beef industry as a whole. In fiscal year 2024, assessments on imported beef contributed approximately $9 million of the total $42 million budget for the Beef Checkoff. This represents almost a quarter of all revenues generated under the Checkoff, providing the funding that is essential to the industry to stimulate beef demand through a combination of initiatives including consumer advertising, research, public relations and new-product development.
Imported beef is not only safe and nutritious, but also a complimentary element to the U.S. beef supply adding value to ranchers and providing a vital component in the many ground beef products manufactured in the U.S. that Americans love to consume. Further, 100% of imported beef is inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before it is allowed into commerce in the U.S., which ensures safety and wholesomeness of the product.
MICA generally opposes tariffs and other trade-restrictive measures as these would potentially result in a decrease in U.S. ground beef production, lead to higher beef costs for U.S. consumers and, most importantly, lower beef demand and hurt the economic returns to the domestic U.S. cattle industry.