Cattle prices are up in all sectors of the beef industry, but producers are facing challenges in other areas, including laboratory-grown meat alternatives and regulations.

“Unfortunately, our industry is continually under attack, and those attacks come in various forms,” said Todd Wilkinson, a South Dakota cattle producer and president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

One of the biggest right now is the laboratory-grown “cell-based” products being recognized by USDA, he said.

“My big concern 10 years out is the fact that we have these fake products that are being sponsored by billionaires like Bill Gates and Richard Branson, and they want to take our cattle off the ground. They want to say that this product is slaughter-free,” he said in a podcast from NCBA’s summer meeting in San Diego.

The cattle industry needs to attack the issue through legislation and regulations, and “we can’t be asleep at the switch,” he said.

Those products need to be labeled correctly and in a way that differentiates them from meat. It is critical to get the labeling and terminology defined now so when those products are on grocery store shelves, they are correctly identified, he said.

Another issue is the potential passage of the Opportunities for Fairness in Faming Act to reform checkoff programs.

The OFF Act is funded and is being pushed through the legislative track by animal activist groups, organizations that want to put producers out of business, he said.

“Follow the money, folks. Look at where it goes, look at who’s trying to put you out of business and then you decide if you want an act that goes in and that does away with all checkoffs,” he said.

The Beef Checkoff has a return of $12 for every dollar spent, he said.

“Why anyone would want to do away with that is beyond me,” he said.

But animal activists want to do away with it because they don’t want to push beef demand, he said.

“That should tell you something about the OFF Act. Anything that HSUS (the Humane Society of the United States) and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the other organizations are lining up to support, you should be running for the door,” he said.

Another issue for cattle producers is regulation.

For more than 10 years, there hasn’t been a clear definition for what is a Water of the United States and what isn’t, he said.

“Now that we have the Supreme Court weighing in with a clear decision, we still have EPA trying to impose their regulatory power in terms of (we) don’t care what the Supreme Court says, EPA’s going to make up the rules,” he said.

In addition, the Bureau of Land Management is trying to redefine grazing legislation that has been in existence for years. They want to put a conservation lease on the same parity with grazing, he said

“There’s no regulatory authority for that, there’s no law authority for that. But we have a BLM administrator that doesn’t really care. This is another edict from Washington, D.C. They don’t really care what the law is, they’re just going to shove it down your throat,” he said.

Cattle producers are dealing with a regulatory onslaught, he said.

“I thought that this was going to be bad, I never envisioned it would be this bad,” he said.