Ireland tracked every cow in early 2022.
Eighteen months later, the government wanted 200,000 of them dead to fight climate change.
And a new cattle tracking rule just handed Democrats one tool to ban beef in America.
Joe Biden waited until the last possible moment to spring his trap on American ranchers.
The mandate requiring electronic ID tags for all cattle moving across state lines took effect November 5, 2024 — the same day Donald Trump crushed Kamala Harris at the ballot box.¹
That timing wasn't coincidental.
Biden's USDA finalized the rule back in April 2024, giving ranchers six months to comply.²
Now every sexually intact cow and bison over 18 months old crossing state lines must carry an RFID tag that tracks its every movement in real-time.³
The old metal clip tags ranchers used for decades?
Gone.
Democrats claim this is about tracing disease faster.
But ranchers in Wyoming, Montana, and across the West know exactly what's coming next.
"They want to be able to control the ranchers a lot tighter than they can now," Wyoming State Representative Allen Slagle warned.⁴
Slagle raises cattle himself and sees right through the government's excuse.
"Either the electronic tags or the old metal tags and brands can accomplish that," Slagle explained about disease tracing. "It's like being told the only thing you can wear is cowboy boots, you can't wear tennis shoes. Both of them accomplish the same thing."⁵
The real danger isn't tracking disease.
It's tracking every rancher and every cow so Democrats can eliminate them when they're ready to implement their climate change agenda.
And we know they're ready because it already happened in Europe.
Ireland's nightmare shows exactly where this leads
Ireland adopted mandatory electronic cattle tags in early 2022.⁶
By May 2023 — just 18 months later — the Irish Department of Agriculture was planning to slaughter 200,000 cows to meet climate targets.⁷
Think about that timeline.
Electronic tracking in 2022.
Mass culling plans in 2023.
The Irish government proposed killing 65,000 cattle per year for three years to cut the national dairy herd by 10% and reduce emissions 25% by 2030.⁸
"Reports like this only serve to further fuel the view that the government is working behind the scenes to undermine our dairy and livestock sectors," Tim Cullinan, president of the Irish Farmers' Association, told reporters.⁹
Even Elon Musk called out the insanity.
"This really needs to stop. Killing some cows doesn't matter for climate change," Musk posted to his 158 million followers.¹⁰
But here's what makes Ireland's story absolutely terrifying for American ranchers.
The electronic tracking system gave the government exactly what it needed — a complete database showing where every cow lived, who owned it, and how to find them when culling time came.
Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman has been sounding the alarm about this exact scenario.
"We need look no further than what happened in Ireland to recognize the threat of a USDA-driven EID mandate," Hageman said. "A mandatory EID simply gives the federal government too much power."¹¹
She's not exaggerating.
Representative Thomas Massie explained the end game during Congressional testimony.
"A rule requiring electronic ear tags for cattle and bison means the government will know where every animal is and who owns it," Massie warned. "This will allow the government to build a registry, which is the first step needed to ban cattle in accordance with the Left's anti-agriculture climate policies."¹²
Democrats spent years calling this a conspiracy theory.
Now look at what just got built on American soil while nobody was paying attention.
Small ranchers get crushed while big operations skate by
Biden's USDA promised to provide free electronic tags to ranchers.
But that supply is already running out, which means ranchers will soon pay for every tag themselves.¹³
And guess who gets hit hardest?
A 2006 Kansas State University study found the RFID system costs large operations $2.48 per head.¹⁴
Small ranchers pay $7.17 per head — nearly three times as much.¹⁵
That's not a bug in the system.
That's the feature Democrats designed to wipe out family ranches and consolidate the beef industry under corporate control.
"This is an unreasonably expensive, unfunded mandate that will lead to the elimination of small producers, vertical integration of our livestock and meat supply, put herds and ranches at risk through invasive Freedom of Information Act requests," Congresswoman Hageman explained.¹⁶
The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund put it even more bluntly.
"The mandatory USDA rule benefits large meatpackers by allowing them to structure their operations to avoid the requirement through group identification, while the rule adds significant cost, burden, and risk for America's independent ranchers and farmers," the organization stated.¹⁷
Translation: Big Agriculture gets loopholes while small ranchers get destroyed.
And once small ranchers are gone, Democrats move to phase two.
Democrats already have legislation ready to eliminate cattle
Remember when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal mentioned getting rid of "farting cows" and the media said conservatives were making it up?
The FAQ document was real.¹⁸
So was AOC admitting on television that "we've got to address factory farming" and suggesting Americans eat fewer hamburgers.¹⁹
Representative Earl Blumenauer took it further with legislation targeting concentrated animal feeding operations.
"We shouldn't be incentivizing them through programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program; we should be forcing them to pay for the damage they cause to the environment and public health," Blumenauer declared.²⁰
But the smoking gun came in September 2024.
Congressional Democrats unveiled legislation using Inflation Reduction Act funding to pay farmers who agree to "permanently cease" livestock operations within 180 days.²¹
Read that again.
Permanently cease.
"Corporate meatpackers use their market power to trap producers in the factory farm system with terrible profit margins and unsustainable debt," Senator Cory Booker claimed while pushing the bill.²²
That's the cover story.
The real goal is eliminating American cattle production in the name of climate change.
And Biden's RFID mandate just handed them the weapon they need to do it.
Every cow is now in a federal database.
Every rancher's herd size is tracked.
Every location is known.
When Democrats are ready to pull the trigger on their climate agenda, they'll know exactly where to send the government agents — just like Ireland planned to do.
Your beef prices are already climbing because of Biden's inflation.
Wait until Democrats use this tracking system to cut America's cattle herd by 25% like Ireland wanted to do.
A ribeye steak will cost what a tank of gas used to.
Trump must kill this surveillance system
President Trump has the authority to reverse Biden's RFID mandate.
But he needs to act fast.
Every day this system stays in place, more cattle get tagged and the database gets bigger.
Ranchers who invested in the new scanning equipment and tags will resist going back to the old system.
And Democrats will scream that removing the mandate "threatens food safety" and "risks disease outbreaks."
That's garbage.
America produced the safest, highest-quality beef in the world for decades using metal tags, brands, and traditional tracing methods.
"America already has the safest and highest quality meat in the world with our current traceability system," former Representative Matt Rosendale (R-MT) stated. "The best stewards of cattle and bison are the ranchers that keep food on American's tables, not some DC bureaucrats who have never set foot on a farm."²³
Trump needs to dismantle this surveillance system before Democrats weaponize it.
Ireland showed us the playbook: electronic tracking leads to government-ordered culling within 18 months.
Biden built the tracking infrastructure.
Now Trump must destroy it before Democrats use it to destroy American ranchers and ban beef in the name of saving the planet.
The cattle industry survived four years of Biden's war on agriculture.
But this RFID mandate is the most dangerous weapon Democrats have ever built to eliminate it.
¹ Minnesota Board of Animal Health, "EID ear tag rule for cattle and bison goes into effect Nov. 5, 2024."
² USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison," Federal Register, May 9, 2024.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Mark Heinz, "Wyoming Ranchers, Hageman Slam Mandatory Electronic Cattle ID Tags," Cowboy State Daily, November 1, 2024.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ O'Donovan Engineering, "What Are the benefits of EID Tags?," September 23, 2021.
⁷ "Cull of Ireland's dairy cattle for climate targets should be 'voluntary', farmers say," The Irish Times, May 30, 2023.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ "Ireland Proposes Culling 200,000 Cows to Help Meet Climate Goals, Farmers Push Back," AgWeb, October 21, 2024.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Harriet Hageman, "Hageman Introduces Bill to Block Mandatory EID Ear Tags," Press Release, June 13, 2024.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Marty Zaluski, "USDA reveals final rule requiring electronically readable tags for livestock," TheFencePost.com, May 3, 2024.
¹⁴ Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, "USDA May Soon Implement RFID; Burden of Electronic Animal Identification Will Fall on Independent Ranchers," March 12, 2024.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Harriet Hageman, Press Release, June 13, 2024.
¹⁷ Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, March 12, 2024.
¹⁸ Marc Thiessen, "Opinion: Democrats, to fight climate change, declare war on cows," Detroit News, February 14, 2019.
¹⁹ Scott Wong, "Ocasio-Cortez explains 'farting cows' comment: 'We've got to address factory farming'," The Hill, February 22, 2019.
²⁰ Thiessen, "Opinion: Democrats, to fight climate change, declare war on cows."
²¹ Sarah Zimmerman, "Democrats propose paying livestock producers to transition away from 'factory farming'," Agriculture Dive, September 27, 2024.
²² Ibid.
²³ Harriet Hageman, Press Release, June 13, 2024.
