Wild Mustangs!? What Is the "Product" They're Actually Importing for Ground Beef? (Video)

In this 25 August 2026 published video, host Charles Rankin talks about the product being imported which is lean beef trimmings, which are standard, USDA-inspected beef cuts from overseas. The internet rumor linking “wild mustangs” to American ground beef is a false conspiracy theory resulting from two unrelated pieces of news breaking at the same time.  

President Trump announced an executive order to temporarily import an additional 300,000 metric tons of tariff-free beef to lower grocery prices while domestic cattle herds rebuild. Officials did not immediately name all the participating countries, leading internet users to label it “mystery meat”. The United States is currently importing a record volume of beef, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasting total annual imports to reach 6.13 billion pounds (approximately 2.1 million metric tons). In the first half of this year alone, the country imported 1.04 million metric tons (2.3 billion pounds) of beef valued at $8.5 billion, a 14 percent increase in volume and a 30 percent jump in value compared to the same period last year. 

One day prior to the beef announcement, The New York Times published an exposé revealing that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had rounded up wild horses and accidentally allowed them to be sold to buyers who exported them to foreign slaughterhouses. Online commentators merged these two stories together, falsely claiming the government was importing those same wild horses back into the country as cheap hamburger meat. 

In reality, the imported product consists of lean trimmings from older cows. In the commercial beef industry, ground beef is made by mixing highly lean meat with the fatty trimmings left over from grain-finished American cattle. This is a completely standard practice used to achieve specific lean-to-fat percentages (like 85/15 or 93/7). 

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) strictly tests and samples all imported meat at U.S. ports to confirm the species on the label, check for pathogens, and enforce chemical standards. Furthermore, commercial horse slaughter is illegal in the U.S., and horse meat is legally banned from being sold for human consumption in American supermarkets.