Wild horses ripped from Nevada’s plains — and into US beef



Imagine dawn breaking over Nevada’s badlands. A herd of wild horses charges across the sagebrush, manes whipping in the wind — living emblems of American freedom, the soul of the West. Then the silence breaks. Helicopter blades thunder overhead, driving the animals into traps. Foals stumble. Mares collapse. Families scatter in terror.

This isn’t a scene from frontier history. It’s happening now — a government-funded assault on one of the most enduring symbols of the American spirit. The Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse roundups have become routine cruelty disguised as “management.” And with the agency preparing its most aggressive operations yet, the time to act is now.

No more federal helicopters terrorizing symbols of liberty while criminals flood our markets with cheap ‘beef.’

Congress once recognized the value of these animals. The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act promised protection and stewardship, not slaughter and imprisonment. But decades of mismanagement have turned that promise into a taxpayer-funded nightmare.

The Bureau’s Wild Horse and Burro Program devours $142 million a year to chase, capture, and confine herds that should roam free. The agency calls it conservation. It looks more like erasure — the slow extermination of the very wildness that once defined the West.

From Nevada into your ground beef

More than 64,000 wild horses and burros now languish in government holding pens — taxpayer-funded cages that solve nothing. The Bureau of Land Management calls it “management,” but it’s warehousing life. Meanwhile, the agency ignores real issues like overgrazing, water misallocation, and habitat loss.

In Nevada, the carnage is especially stark. Last fiscal year, federal contractors ripped 2,196 horses from the Triple B Complex. Twenty-seven died on-site, collapsing under the stress of helicopter chases. The rest face grim odds in confinement, where mortality rates hover around 12%. Videos from inside these facilities show workers kicking panicked horses — proof that “humane management” has devolved into cruelty.

The story doesn’t end in captivity. Many of these captured horses end up in the slaughter pipeline. Sold at auction for as little as $5 to $25 a head, they cross borders into Mexico and Canada, where their meat re-enters U.S. markets illegally — blended into ground beef at a time of soaring prices.

This scandal isn’t just about animal welfare; it’s about corruption and public health. The same pipeline that traffics horse meat often intersects with drug and human smuggling networks, all subsidized by American taxpayers.

Actress and horse rescuer Dawn Olivieri, known for her roles in “Yellowstone” and “Homestead,” has called out the hypocrisy: With beef prices at record highs, why is the government allowing wild horse meat to undercut the market — and endanger consumers?

Call for accountability

The federal response has been a blueprint for more misery. The fiscal year 2026 presidential budget proposal guts the program by over 25%, slashing funding from $142 million to $100 million, all while dangling lethal options like euthanasia for healthy herds.

Nevada's herds are ground zero. The Bureau of Land Management’s latest bombshell is a plan to yank nearly 5,000 wild horses from the Callaghan Complex using those same inhumane helicopter drives, ignoring fresh data and science on fertility controls or habitat restoration.

This isn't land management. It's a war on wildlife, propping up special interests while ranchers and communities bear the brunt of unbalanced ecosystems and federal overreach.

Demand action now

Fixing this problem requires more than outrage — it demands bold, commonsense conservatism. Cut the waste, restore the range, and honor the law’s original intent.

Start by releasing healthy captives into the designated herd areas envisioned by Congress in 1971. Doing so would ease the $142 million burden now falling on taxpayers and return the animals to the land they’re meant to roam.

Replace helicopter roundups with proven, humane population control. PZP vaccines work. They prevent overbreeding without cruelty and cost a fraction of constant captures.

Then empower local communities. Offer tax credits to ranchers who adopt sustainable grazing practices. Build revenue through eco-tourism — guided mustang trails, for instance — and expand adoption programs that put horses to work without the whip.

Finally, shut down the slaughter pipeline for good. Enforce the Save America’s Forgotten Equines Act to ban horse meat exports nationwide and close the kill-buyer loopholes that make butchery profitable.

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Photo Paul Harris/Getty Images

This battle echoes larger fights against government bloat. Just as we decry asset forfeiture abuses that seize property without due process, we must end the Bureau of Land Management’s unchecked grabs of Nevada's heritage. Fiscal hawks know the math: $142 million squandered yearly could fund tax relief for veterans or bolster border security.

No more federal helicopters terrorizing living symbols of liberty while criminals flood our markets with cheap “beef.”

The establishment thrives on apathy, but Nevadans, from ranchers to rescuers, aren't buying it. Nevada's wild horses aren't Washington's playthings — they're our legacy. Let's reclaim the range before the dust settles for good.

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Say no to synthetic: America needs real meat, not lab slop



The push for lab-grown and artificial meat is no accident. It is a coordinated campaign to reframe how Americans think about food. From glowing media coverage to celebrity endorsements, the message is clear: Ranching is destructive, eating real meat is backward, and the future belongs to synthetic substitutes.

Beneath the glossy propaganda lies a troubling experiment — one that threatens the livelihoods of ranchers, undermines food security, and hands more control of the food supply to corporate and global elites.

What ‘fake meat’ really means

Plant-based “meat” products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods use plant matter mixed with additives to mimic the flavor and texture of beef. Lab-grown “meat” is even more radical: animal cells cultivated in bioreactors through a chemical process, then marketed as the real thing.

These companies aren’t simply offering another option at the grocery store. They are trying to redefine what counts as food — and consolidate who controls it.

Both are ultra-processed concoctions. They imitate rather than nourish, raising serious questions about their long-term effects on human health.

Under normal circumstances, such products would remain niche novelties. But with heavy investment from billionaires like Bill Gates, development has accelerated. Gates has argued that “all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef” and poured millions into the industry. At the same time, mainstream media outlets have worked overtime to present lab-grown and plant-based meats as inevitable, urgent, and morally superior.

Follow the money

The driving force is not consumer demand. It is financial interest. These companies aren’t simply offering another option at the grocery store. They are trying to redefine what counts as food — and consolidate who controls it.

Consumers are told they are “saving the planet.” In reality, they are enriching investors and empowering corporations that want to dominate the food supply chain.

What’s in it?

The supposed “better” alternatives raise their own health concerns. Plant-based burgers are not vegetables pressed into patties but chemical cocktails that include methylcellulose, a laxative additive, and soy leghemoglobin, a genetically engineered substance designed to mimic myoglobin, the protein in meat that people often mistake for blood.

Lab-grown meat, even less tested, relies on processes with no precedent at scale. Regulators are barely beginning to study safety issues. Meanwhile, we already know ultra-processed foods shorten lives. A 19-year study linked high consumption of such foods to a 31% higher mortality rate, along with increased rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

To assume that fake meat will escape these dangers is wishful thinking.

The attack on ranchers

If this were merely a matter of consumer choice, the stakes would be lower. But the movement does more than promote itself. It vilifies ranching, branding cattlemen as climate villains.

That message lands hardest when ranchers are already under siege. U.S. cattle numbers have fallen to 86.7 million head — the lowest since 1951. Since 2017, more than 100,000 beef operations have closed, a 15% decline. Rising feed costs, volatile markets, and the dominance of giant packers already squeeze small producers. Fake meat could finish the job.

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Photo by Nick Otto for the Washington Post

When family ranches collapse, food production falls even more under the control of corporate giants and investors with little connection to rural America. Transparency disappears. Communities lose their anchor. Consumers end up beholden to whoever controls the labs.

This push isn’t about “helping the planet.” It’s about gaining control and consolidating power.

What policymakers can do

Markets work only when buyers get honest information and producers compete on equal footing. State and federal officials should:

  • Require clear labels (“plant-based” or “cell-cultivated”) so shoppers know what they are buying.
  • Police false environmental or health claims.
  • Enforce competition laws to keep big buyers from crushing small ranchers.
  • Improve price transparency.
  • Help local producers connect with consumers and earn fair value for sustainable grazing.

Supporting ranchers and strengthening antitrust enforcement would do more for food security and public health than subsidizing experimental startups.

Keep food real

Fake meat is sold as progress. In reality, it risks damaging our health, weakening our food supply, and destroying the ranchers who have long fed the nation.

Even if lab-grown meat proves harmless, centralizing control over food erodes transparency, accountability, and community. The future of food should not be synthetic. It should be local, rooted in real ranching, and kept in the hands of Americans who have nourished this country for generations.

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'Dark climate change religion': Middle school teacher feeds sixth-graders bugs and climate alarmist propaganda



Utah's Nebo School District seeks to "prepare students to succeed in school and life." Apparently, that preparation now involves eating bugs and developing a dislike of beef.

Fox News Digital reported that a middle school in the district recently provided sixth-grade students with bugs to eat as part of an English assignment concerning the specter of anthropogenic climate change.

What are the details?

Students were instructed to write an essay on March 7 arguing in support of the consumption of insects rather than cows. The assignment's baked-in presumption was that the mass production and consumption of insect-based foods contra beef will impact weather patterns to a lesser extent.

Children involved in this interactive agitprop were reportedly barred from disagreeing with the premise in their essays. Some students were even given extra credit to consume bugs, which the district admitted to sourcing from a commercial site.

Amanda Wright, a mother of one of the students in the class, challenged the school's principal over the assignment, noting it had made her daughter feel uncomfortable.

Wright suggested that the assignment was tantamount to "indoctrination" and part of a concerted effort to evangelize on behalf of a "dark climate change religion."

Following her initial complaint, Wright met with school administrators and recorded the conversation. Alison Hansen, the principal, was recorded saying "the assignment was about finding facts to support" the climate alarmist premise.

"All the evidence has suggested ... that we probably should be eating bugs – it's good for the environment, etc. But I didn't know that that was an offensive topic," said Kim Cutler, a teacher at Spring Canyon Middle School not presently listed on its faculty page.

Wright's daughter similarly captured evidence of climate dogmatism in the classroom.

"How come we can't state our opinion and write that we shouldn't be eating bugs?" asked the sixth-grader.

"Because we don't have any evidence to support it," said Cutler.

In 2019, Swedish researchers warned in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution that by rushing into the mass production and consumption of insects, "we risk creating an industry that replaces one environmental problem with another."

Whereas Cutler told Wright's daughter there was no evidence to support not eating bugs, experts at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences suggested there is similarly little evidence to suggest that the mass rearing of insects won't turn out to be calamitous.

"The emerging insects-as-food industry is increasingly promoted as a sustainable alternative to other animal protein production systems. However, the exact nature of its environmental benefits are uncertain because of the overwhelming lack of knowledge concerning almost every aspect of production: from suitable species, their housing and feed requirements, and potential for accidental release," said the researchers.

The researchers added, "If ecological sustainability is to be a hallmark of mass insect rearing for consumption, ecologists need to engage in research related to sustainability criteria that are directly linked to key elements of the development of the industry."

Cutler told the younger Wright, "It's kind of weird that I gave you a topic where there is only one right answer. We don't want to eat bugs and it's gross. But should we be eating bugs? Yeah, because we're killing the world by raising cows and animals. So we need to, not get rid of cows, but like, try to balance our diet so that not so much of our land is being used to raise cows, 'cause it's killing the ozone layer."

When the younger Wright attempted to raise an objection, Cutler said, "There's only one right answer to this essay. And it's that Americans should be eating bugs. Everyone in the world is eating them, it's healthy for the environment and there's just, there's only one right answer."

Fox News Digital indicated that Cutler later explained that the district had pushed bug-eating advocacy in its training.

The district admitted in a statement that extra credit had been offered in exchange for kids eating bugs and noted that upon Wright expressing concern, 'The student was offered another topic of the student’s choice. Remember this particular assignment is about finding facts versus opinions to support writing an argumentative essay."

Bugging out

TheBlaze has previously reported on the joint effort by climate alarmists and technocrats to preclude the masses from consuming real meat as part of a broader campaign to combat the specter of climate change.

The Guardian ran an op-ed in 2018 claiming, "Reducing our meat intake is crucial to avoiding climate breakdown, since food production accounts for about a quarter of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions, and is predicted to rise. In western countries, this means eating 90% less beef and five times as many beans and pulses."

A 2017 review published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development suggested that rather than meat, humans could instead try eating weeds, micro-algae, and bugs.

The World Economic Forum ran an article in February 2022 touting bugs as "an excellent alternative source of protein" and a way to "significantly reduce our carbon footprint." The WEF author went so far as to suggest that insects are "part of a virtuous eco-cycle."

When speaking recently at the WEF, Siemens AG chairman Jim Hagemann similarly called on people to stop eating meat to curb the specter of anthropogenic climate change.

"If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but it will also inspire innovation of food systems," Hagemann told a crowd of technocrats in Davos, Switzerland.

Extra to foisting a bug diet on the population, alarmists have recommended lab-grown cancer-based synthetic meat as an alternative to eating real beef.

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Even CNN Turns on Biden as His Ratings Plummet
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Even CNN Turns on Biden as His Ratings Plummet

America's beef supply is expected to shrink as drought and rising production costs prevent ranchers from growing their herds



Beef prices are likely to continue rising as U.S. based cattle ranchers continue to shrink the size of their herds.

This move is expected to further constrain U.S. beef production in the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported. Data from the federal government confirms that rising costs for feed and other expenses are encouraging ranchers to sell to sell calves into feedlots around the country at a faster rate which leaves fewer cattle available for slaughter. It is expected that this will become more pronounced later this year and into 2023.

Persistent drought conditions throughout the Western U.S. have decimated grazing pastures which causes cattle farmers to spend more money on supplemental feed which presents another major problem for the beef industry.

By 2023, beef production is expected to decline by 7% and cattle prices are expected to increase to record highs. These increased costs and shrinking supply pose serious problems for meatpackers like Tyson Foods Inc., JBS USA holdings Inc., Cargill Inc., and National Beef Packing Co. It is likely that the increased cost of beef production is already being passed onto consumers. The more expensive it is to raise and maintain cows, and as fewer cows are raised for slaughter, the more expensive beef products will eventually cost. Ground beef and chicken prices have already reached all-time highs.

Jeanie Alderson, a fourth-generation rancher in Birney, Montana, said that she sold about 75 aging mother cows from her heard of around 250 in recent months. Typically, Alderson would buy new cows in the spring to replace the ones she sold off but she said that it has been too expensive for her to take any more into her herd this year.

Alderson indicated that wildfires in the southeastern portion of Montana are burning up the pastures where her cattle typically feed and that some of her fellow Montana ranchers have had to spend more money on expensive livestock feeds. These additional expenses and hardships are causing ranchers to reduce the size of the herds.

Alderson said, “It’s really stressful. A lot of ranchers are in deep, deep debt and if they have to go more in debt, some people will go out of business in the next few years.”

Drought conditions and higher operating costs encouraged ranchers to rapidly cull beef cows in the first quarter of 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Iowa State University estimates that American cattle producers have lost money five of the past eight months.