From staff reports Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin grilled Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan last week, criticizing the agency’s rules for adding to the rising food costs pushed on to American consumers.
“Under Joe Biden, costs have skyrocketed over 17%,” said Sen. Mullin. “While Oklahoma families are struggling to put food on the table, Joe Biden’s EPA is regulating entrepreneurs out of existence and setting new rules that will send meat and poultry prices through the roof.
Regan appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during a hearing on the agency’s proposed 2025 Fiscal Year budget. Mullin used it as an opportunity to criticize Regan and the Biden administration on EPA rules that are putting some industry firms out of business.
”Industry has bent over backwards to meet regulatory standards, but the EPA would rather move the goal post and ignore private industry’s successes in effluent limitation mitigation than communicate with America’s farmers and ranchers. We must hold the EPA accountable to the American people,” Mullin said during the hearing.
Mullin, the Ranking Member of the Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee, emphasized that the EPA’s proposed rule on Effluent Limitation Guidelines on Meat and Poultry Products hinders the administration’s goal of creating a resilient meat and poultry supply chain.
As a fourth-generation cow-calf rancher, Mullin knows firsthand the negative impact new burdensome regulations will have on not only the country’s food supply and consumer costs, but also the economic prosperity of Oklahoma’s farmers, growers and producers.