The U.S. Senate yesterday voted to confirm Brooke Rollins to be President Trump’s Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) by a margin of 72-28.
Rollins, an attorney who graduated from Texas A&M University with an undergraduate degree in agricultural development, served as White House domestic policy chief during President Trump’s first term. She is the former president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute and previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She worked as a litigation attorney in Dallas and also clerked for a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas after earning her law degree from the University of Texas.
National Chicken Council President Harrison Kircher released the following statement in response to today’s confirmation:
“On behalf of America’s chicken producers, I want to congratulate Ms. Rollins on today’s well-deserved confirmation to be our next Secretary of Agriculture. I know she will be a strong advocate for our nation’s agricultural communities and will fight for America’s farmers and food producers.
“During the last four years, the Biden administration has imposed a non-scientific and costly regulatory agenda on the chicken industry. We are eager to get to work with Secretary Rollins and her team to advance policies that strengthen the chicken industry and more importantly, provide relief to American consumers who have been struggling with inflation and high food prices, including:
- Seeking assurances to protect U.S. chicken exports should vaccination be contemplated as part of any government strategy to combat Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI or Bird Flu);
- Rescinding controversial Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) contracting rules that were scrapped during President Trump’s first term and brought back from the dead under President Biden. The rules would empower trial attorneys to file and potentially win frivolous lawsuits against meat and poultry processors, impose billions of dollars in costs, and inflict massive litigation risk upon the chicken industry for no quantifiable benefit;
- Initiating new rulemaking that would provide certainty by allowing chicken processing facilities to operate above traditional line speed restrictions – which has been piloted and studied for more than two decades – thus increasing our global competitiveness; and
- Withdrawing ineffective and impossible-to-implement proposed regulations relating to Salmonella and poultry that would increase the price of chicken and cause millions of pounds of safe, wholesome product to be sent to landfills rather than dinner tables. All with no quantifiable impact on public health.”
