Fact check: Kamala Harris does not want to ban red meat as Trump keeps falsely claiming
At recent rallies, former President Donald Trump has taken to accusing his new Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, of wanting to ban red meat if she wins in November.
Trump’s claim is false.
Harris has never supported “pass[ing] laws to outlaw red meat to stop climate change,” as Trump misleadingly told a North Carolina audience on July 24.
Nor is Harris plotting to “get rid of your cows” as Trump added on July 31 in Pennsylvania.
In fact, when asked about the issue during a 2019 climate change forum on CNN, Harris said that she loves cheeseburgers — and that she thinks updating dietary recommendations to encourage healthy, environmentally friendly eating is a better approach than “banning certain behaviors.”
“Just to be very honest with you: I love cheeseburgers from time to time. Right? I mean, I just do,” Harris said. “But there has to be, also, what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effects of our eating habits on our environment … and the government has to do a much better job of that.”
Following up, host Erin Burnett asked Harris if she would support changing the “food pyramid” — aka, the optimal daily nutrition guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Yes,” Harris replied.
“To reduce red meat specifically?” Burnett asked.
“Yes, I would,” Harris said. “I've always believed that we should, you know, expand what's on those cans of those things you buy in the grocery store. We should expand the list. And included in that should be a measure of the impact on the environment.”
According to Dr. Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, an accumulated body of evidence shows a clear link between high intake of red and processed meats and a higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and premature death. But such meats are fine in “moderation,” as Harris put it; Hu recommends “no more than two to three servings per week.”
Environmentally, “about 40% of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, deforestation and other land-use changes,” according to Scientific American, with meat — particularly beef — driving climate change through cows’ methane emissions and the conversion of forests to grazing land.
Increasing awareness of these effects through food labels or dietary guidelines wouldn’t prevent Americans from eating red meat. For instance, some states and localities require fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s to display calorie counts on their menus — but Big Macs are still legal and abundant across in the U.S.
Of course, none of this has stopped Republicans such as Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz from trying to make Harris seem “radical” by accusing her of plotting to eradicate beef. (They said the same thing about President Biden when he took office in 2021 — and no ban ever went into effect.)
“Kamala can't have my guns, she can't have my gasoline engine — and she sure as hell can't have my steaks and cheeseburgers,” Cruz said last week on Fox News, where host Sean Hannity has also fixated on Harris’s nonexistent red-meat ban. “She is a radical California leftist.”
Harris said in May that her go-to McDonald’s order is the (not-so-radical) Quarter Pounder with Cheese (with a side of fries). She has been known to dine on D.C.’s Ghostburger with her boss. And as an avid cook and avowed foodie, then-Sen. Harris can be seen sharing her meatball recipe with Chef Tom Colicchio on an episode of her 2020 YouTube series “Cooking with Kamala.”
“When I do Italian meatballs, I shred the onion, because then it actually adds some moisture,” Harris says.
“So are you finishing this recipe?” Colicchio asks after Harris starts telling him about “onion goggles.”
“I’ll start chopping as we talk, but honestly, Tom … it didn’t completely defrost yet,” a giggling Harris says as she bangs a frozen block of butcher-wrapped ground beef on her kitchen counter.
“See, politicians can tell the truth!” Colicchio says, laughing. “There it is!”
In early 2017, Trump enjoyed his first dinner out as president at BLT Prime by David Burke, which was located within Trump’s own Washington, D.C., hotel. (Both the restaurant and the hotel have since closed.) He reportedly ordered a well-done, $54 aged New York strip steak with ketchup.
