Beef and Lamb Backed to Help Solve Health Crisis

MAHA Report Links Livestock Nutrition to Healthier U.S. Children

The new Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Report is shining a national spotlight on livestock producers. It recognizes cattle and sheep as essential to solving America’s childhood health crisis.

Initiated under President’s executive order, the report was co-authored by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. It lays out causes of worsening child health and offers policy solutions.

Among the drivers: poor diet, environmental toxins, stress, lack of exercise, and overuse of medications. The solution? A return to “whole foods” like beef and lamb.

“Beef contains protein that maintains skeletal muscle, which plays a key role in regulating metabolic health,” the report states. Lamb and mutton offer similar support with vital vitamins and nutrients.

The report criticizes the rise of ultra-processed foods and industrial seed oils that replaced nutritious animal fats post-WWII. It argues this shift helped spark the current health crisis.

It notes: “Farmers are the backbone of America… The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.”

The report also warns that food system concentration—where four companies dominate the meat industry—threatens domestic livestock production and health access.

Leaders in the cattle and sheep industries now call for action to restore fair markets, limit harmful imports, and grow a stable meat supply.

They plan to submit a strategy to Agriculture Secretary Rollins that supports these goals and strengthens America’s food future.

This historic report marks the first time federal agencies have officially recognized the livestock sector as key to fixing childhood health in the U.S.