Tom Vilsack is President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to head the USDA. And many in the Ag community are happy to see the return of Vilsack, who spent eight years as Ag Secretary under President Obama. Ethan Lane with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said it’s great to have Vilsack back.

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“We have a relationship with him, everyone else in agriculture has a relationship with him already, and that’s probably good news. That means we won’t have to re-litigate some of these old issues, and hopefully, we can go forward. He can pick right up with some of the conversations we’ve been having in agriculture and go right to work. So, we’re excited to have him back at the helm and excited to get started and see what this administration wants to focus on.”

Lane said Vilsack also knows what will and won’t work for the beef industry, such as Country of Origin Labeling.

“He doesn’t have to relearn the realities of some of those issues because the rhetoric doesn’t always match the reality. That’s really positive. We have moved on from the M-COOL conversation, and the bulk of the industry is focused on ‘Product of the USA’ labeling. That’s a more immediate concern for us, the open-ended use of labels like ‘Product of the USA’ that don’t fit what the consumer’s expectation is and it doesn’t allow our producers to differentiate what is the best beef in the world here in the U.S. in a voluntary way that allows them to grow market share.”

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