Todd Wilkinson
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President Todd Wilkinson recently slammed administration overregulation during a recent NCBA Beltway Beef podcast. Wilkinson says Biden agencies from the EPA to the Bureau of Land Management are trying to take away the cattle industry’s freedoms.
He cites recent EPA statements that it can make minor changes to its Waters of the U.S. rule after the Supreme Court invalidated its central test for a jurisdictional wetland.
“Now that we got the Supreme Court weighing in with a clear decision, we still have the EPA trying to impose their regulatory power, in terms of, don’t care what the Supreme Court says, EPA’s going to make up the rules.”
And then, there’s Interior’s Bureau of Land Management.
“We have the BLM now trying to redefine the grazing legislation that’s been in existence for years. They want to put a conservation lease on the same parity with grazing. There’s no regulatory authority for that. There’s no law authority for that.”
Other farm groups like the American Farm Bureau have also weighed in against overregulation that Wilkinson sees as a dictatorial approach.
“What they can’t do legislatively, they’re attempting to do by regulation. And if we don’t fight back on these regulations, both in the court and legislatively, to push back, to defund them, they want to control how you do business, when you do business, and where you do business. And that’s just not the way NCBA believes the world should operate.”
President Biden and his agency heads argue Americans have a right to clean air, water, and land, which they’ll continue to pursue. Producer groups counter that farmers and ranchers are the best stewards of the land and must be to protect their investments for themselves and future generations.
(From the National Association of Farm Broadcasters)