By Joel Salatin

Having been considered for the role of advisor to the secretary for the USDA, I am urging our leaders to prioritize policies that support regenerative agriculture, animal welfare, and environmental conservation.

I am urging all of us as leaders to work together in building a more ethical and sustainable food system for all—from the soil to the seas.

My favorite congressman, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has been championing this cause. He recently sponsored the PRIME (Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption) Act, which, if passed, would reduce regulatory barriers for small, independent meat processors across the United States.

In essence, the PRIME Act aims to strengthen the resilience of the U.S. meat supply chain by promoting local processing, supporting small-scale farmers, and expanding consumer access to locally sourced, sustainably raised meat. This type of reform should be a USDA priority.

As if that weren’t enough, Congressman Massie also introduced the Interstate Milk Freedom Act (H.R. 8374), which seeks to address regulatory barriers to the sale of raw milk across state lines. This bill would remove federal restrictions on the interstate transport of unpasteurized milk, giving consumers greater access to locally sourced raw milk and dairy products.

This is part of Congressman Massie’s broader push to reform the agricultural system—supporting both local farmers and more sustainable practices. Let liberty ring.

Together with Massie, let us all take a creative and serious look at the federal interventions in the food system, farming, and energy. The USDA plays a critical role in shaping these policies, and it is time for meaningful change.

What is your first request for the new USDA agenda?

A Personal Reflection

As a regenerative livestock farmer, I can personally attest to the incredible results that can be achieved with ethical treatment of our animals and land.

On my regenerative farm—Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia—the soil is a teaming trillion-being choreography—all interacting, trading, and even talking. The same is true above ground between leaves and animals; indeed, all of creation pulses with life.

To be healthy, people need to eat something that lived and died. Not artificial. Not sterile. Yet, much of what makes up the Standard American Diet (SAD) is highly processed, filled with unrecognizable ingredients fabricated from inert materials.

You can squeeze out Velveeta cheese from a tube and it will sit on a table for a year without changing. A block of real living cheese gets fuzzy in days and sprouts legs to walk off the table within a week.

We don’t ask how to make a happy tomato. We only ask how to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.

American ingenuity breeds and chooses tomato cultivars not for nutrition, but so they can bounce around in the back of a tractor trailer for 2,000 miles and not turn to mush. The supermarket offering, then, tastes more like cardboard than tomato and we wonder why our children don’t like tomatoes.

Americans pasteurize milk, water it down, produce it in factory farms from corn-fed cows and turn it into something that tastes like chalk. And we wonder why children don’t like milk.

Chickens from factory farms never see daylight, never see a blade of grass, never breathe clean air, receive antibiotics or mRNA to deal with infections, and are crowded beak by wattle, 20,000 at a time.

Never mind, though, because enough spices will make it edible, and enough chlorine will sterilize it. The USDA should prioritize standards that encourage ethical and sustainable farming rather than factory-scale production.

I can remember when birthday parties for three-year-olds did not require a week of back-and-forth among moms to find out who had which food allergies. The phrase did not exist.

I can remember when things such as E. coli, Campylobacter, Listeria, and Salmonella were not part of the average American’s vocabulary. These food safety issues have exploded despite stringent USDA regulations—showing that a new approach is needed.

These phrases are nature on its knees, crying out, “Enough! Enough abuse! Enough disrespect! Enough violence!” My question then is, when will we finally listen?

Rethinking USDA Policies for a Better Food System

For the sake of our health, our societal success, and the life of our natural resources, we must think differently about food. When we think differently, we will act differently. That means we care about pollinators and repent in sackcloth and ashes if we spray a chemical that kills them.

That means we care about how to produce a more nutritious egg. That means we do everything possible to make tomatoes tasty and succulent enough that kids prefer them to snacks. All of this means we build agriculture on carbon. Chemical fertilizer doesn’t grow soil; decomposing carbon does.

That means we start placing our plants and animals on land that enables them to fully express their physiological distinctiveness. That means we quit subsidizing and protecting monocultures; instead, we eliminate taxpayer-funded picks of winners and losers.

Finally, we must open up unregulated choice between neighbors. Our culture lauds its choice in the bedroom, choice in the bathroom, and choice in the womb; let’s extend choice to the kitchen.

With the support of thought leaders such as Congressman Thomas Massie, let’s advocate for a Dietary Emancipation Proclamation that not only liberates entrepreneurial food crafters from the shackles of sized-based food regulations but opens the door to thousands of innovative options in the free market.

Let’s get it done.

Thank you,
Joel Salatin
Polyface Farm
Editor, The Stockman Grass Farmer

______________________________________________________

Joel Salatin is the author of fifteen books, including Folks, This Ain’t Normal, Polyface Micro: Success with Livestock on a Homestead Scale, and Beyond Labels. Salatin has been featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc. Salatin’s regenerative farm, Polyface Farm, located in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley in Swoope, Virginia, serves more than 5,000 families, fifty restaurants, and ten retail outlets.

When he’s not on the road lecturing, Salatin is at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.