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Jack Link’s, the world’s largest manufacturer of meat snacks, has spent years integrating itself into the country’s cultural and political arenas.
Riding a wave of protein-crazed consumers and a booming snack industry, the company’s iconic Sasquatch marketing campaign has helped its products become a staple in gas stations, grocery checkout lines and school vending machines.
The company has also spent years cultivating deep political ties, funneling millions to Donald Trump and nurturing a relationship with the president that has led to White House access.
Trump has been a strong supporter of the meat industry and welcomed Jack Link’s officials to a White House event during his first term. However, the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement is currently pushing for healthier eating standards and for states to restrict processed foods in their nutrition programs.
Now, Jack Link’s and the processed meat industry are caught between conflicting ideologies within the Trump administration and a battle over the future of food policy.
“There’s very much a conflict within this administration about the role of corporate power and public health,” said Judith McGeary, executive director of the Texas-based sustainable agriculture and farmer advocacy group Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.
In May, the federal MAHA commission, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recommended in a new report that Americans consume fewer sugary drinks, snacks and processed foods.
While the report didn’t specifically mention processed meat snacks, it grabbed the attention of snack giants like Jack Link’s and other corporate agriculture groups, which are opposed to any additional regulations or changes to the food industry, McGeary said.
The report did note that low-income children and families consume more processed meat than their peers and that these products have been classified as carcinogens linked to serious health risks.
Kennedy, along with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, has encouraged states to restrict what foods can be purchased with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
States, from West Virginia to California, have responded by approving bans that limit purchases of sugary beverages, snacks and foods with dyes and artificial ingredients.
Jack Link’s responded by hiring a lobbying firm, a move that paid off when it faced increased regulations during Trump’s first term.
Minong, Wisconsin — a small, rural village in the state’s northwestern tip, home to taverns, gravel roads, rows of northern Wisconsin pine trees, and plenty of grazing land for beef cattle — is one of dozens of small towns across the state with roots in the cattle and lumber industries.
Minong is also home to a bigfoot-sized footprint of Jack Link’s that is hard to ignore.
Jack Link’s, owned by Link Snacks, is a $2 billion, privately owned company with dual headquarters in Minong and downtown Minneapolis, a few hours away.
The company employs roughly 4,000 people worldwide. Jack Link’s leadership has long served on local college and hospital boards and, in 2016, broke ground for the Jack Link’s Aquatic & Activity Center in Minong.
What started in the late 1980s as a family-owned jerky company has evolved into a global enterprise with offices and production plants in Canada, Australia, Mexico and Brazil.
Troy Link, son of company founder and current board member John “Jack” Link, has led the company’s global expansion since he became CEO in 2013.
Link has also developed a relationship with the Trump administration over the years by hosting private fundraising events and donating to his campaigns.
Last year, Link also donated half a million dollars to America PAC, a political action committee founded and operated by Elon Musk, according to Federal Elections Committee filings.
This donation placed Link among a highly influential group of donors and prominent technology and cryptocurrency industry moguls, such as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Link donated $1.3 million during Trump’s 2020 re-election bid and also welcomed the president to a private fundraiser in July 2020 at his Florida mansion.
As a whole, the Link family has donated roughly $2.3 million to candidates, committees and state parties in the last decade. The majority of this occurred during the 2020 and 2024 Trump campaigns.
In 2018, the company was invited to the White House as part of a “Made In America” exhibition, where each state showcased a single business with products made in the country.
Troy Link did not respond to repeated requests for comment regarding the relationship of Jack Link’s and the Trump administration.
This relationship with politicians has served the company in the past. In Trump’s first term, Jack Link’s lobbied for beef jerky and meat snack sticks to qualify for the nation’s Child Nutrition Programs, such as school meals.
An Obama-era rule prohibited the reimbursement of beef jerky and dried meat products for school food purchases in 2011. When the rules were revisited under Trump in 2018, Jack Link’s argued in documents submitted to the USDA that dried meat products should receive the same crediting and treatment as other meat, like hamburgers and chicken strips.
“These food products should be held to the same standard as any other meat product when determining eligibility,” a Jack Link’s attorney wrote. “Currently, this is not the case because USDA has arbitrarily disqualified dried meat products from the program.”
A bipartisan trio of Wisconsin federal officials came to the aid of Jack Link’s during this regulatory update, with Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and former Congressman and current U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy writing in support of this change soon after.
“We are concerned that (Food and Nutrition Service) has overstepped in excluding this entire product class from consideration,” the officials wrote in a February 2018 letter. “Therefore, we respectfully request USDA to reevaluate this categorical exclusion.”
Link family members donated a combined $73,000 to the authors of the letter.
The lobbying effort worked. The Food and Nutrition Service announced in December 2018 that beef jerky and dried meat products were now eligible for reimbursement as part of school snacks and meals. Jack Link’s currently markets its snacks directly to school food purchasers.
The addition of school contracts and other market growth helped fuel the company’s expansion.
In recent years, Jack Link’s has broken ground on new manufacturing facilities across the country and purchased jerky companies from Tyson Foods and British packaged goods giant Unilever.
The company also launched Lorissa’s Kitchen, a healthy meat snack brand fronted by Troy’s spouse, Lorissa, and sold at Walmart and Costco nationwide. The brand differentiates itself from Jack Link’s by selling snacks “without added preservatives, nitrites or MSG and allergen-free products,” according to company media statements.
During the 2024 Republican National Convention, Link also appeared on a Fox News business segment to argue that inflation under Biden was making it more expensive for consumers to purchase snacks.
“Buying snacks should not be a luxury item; this should be an everyday occurrence,” Link said. “We just need to put more money back into the consumer’s pocket.”
As Jack Link’s worked to build a close relationship with the Trump administration, meat consumption was booming, especially thanks to right-wing influencers.
Online personalities, such as podcast hosts Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, have advocated for all-meat diets, including raw meat and eggs.
The connection between meat consumption and conservative politics dates back decades, according to food studies researcher Adrienne Bitar.
“Higher meat consumption has always been understood as sort of more conservative,” said Bitar, author of “Diet and the Disease of Civilization.”
“Where it comes up in the alt-right is the idea that the feminizing effects of civilization are unnatural, restrictive, repressive, and to liberate yourself from the accoutrements of civilization means to follow your appetite, with the hunger for meat being one of those appetites.”
Meat snacks sales increased 40% from 2019 to 2022, according to an industry report. The desire for more protein-dense snacks has risen across the entire food sector, from protein-packed popcorn to chocolate muffins.
However, the nation’s protein consumption far outpaces that of similar nations and needs to be reassessed, according to grocery experts and leading nutritionists.
“Unless you’re a competitive athlete or competitive bodybuilder, you’re probably eating too much protein,” said Errol Schweizer, publisher of The Checkout Grocery Update, a grocery industry publication, and former vice president of grocery for the multinational supermarket Whole Foods.
Schweizer said the popularity of protein snacks has ebbed and flowed with American consumers, following the trends of certain diets and lifestyles over the past few decades. U.S. consumers are “obsessed” with protein intake, he said, and typically have diets that consist of fewer fresh fruits, vegetables, fiber and healthy fats.
Schweizer’s observations align with the nation’s blueprint for diet and nutrition.
Updated every five years, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans helps shape national standards for nutrition labeling, school meals and chronic disease prevention.
In October 2024, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a 20-person group of nutrition experts, released its recommended updates to both the USDA and the HHS. Now those two agencies will review recommendations and public comments to set the final dietary guidelines later this year.
Since 2000, the panel has consistently urged Americans to cut back on red and processed meats in favor of lean meat, seafood and plant-based proteins.
The committee’s 2024 report recommends diets “lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains and saturated fats.”
The country’s leading meat industry group, The Meat Institute, whose members include Jack Link’s and other major meatpacking and meat snack companies, has argued against the committee’s recommendations.
“The Meat Institute is extremely concerned that consumers will inaccurately perceive meat and poultry products as poor dietary choices, which may lead to a variety of unintended consequences, including nutritional deficiencies in certain sub-populations,” the Virginia-based group wrote to the HHS in February.
The National Pork Board, the pork checkoff organization based in Clive, Iowa, wrote to the health department in February, stating that recommendations to reduce consumption of red meats are short-sighted and efforts to push foods such as legumes and beans over meats “does not seem to be supported by a robust body of evidence.”
“The elevation of plant-based protein sources over lean meats could inadvertently discourage the consumption of nutrient-dense lean meats, thus increasing the risk of nutritional deficiencies,” the letter stated.
In its inaugural report, the MAHA Commission wrote that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has a “history of being unduly influenced by corporate interests,” noting how a past attempt to reduce the push for reducing intake of processed meats has been met with backlash and scientific discrediting from the meat industry.
In late June, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, flanked by Kennedy in the state capitol, announced a sweeping set of executive orders to remove processed foods and foods with additives from the state’s nutrition programs.
“For far too long, we have settled for food that has made us sicker as a nation,” said Stitt at a June press event. “In Oklahoma, we’re choosing common sense, medical freedom, and personal responsibility. President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have led the charge nationally; I’m grateful for their support as we Make Oklahoma Healthy Again.”
Other states have followed suit with Arkansas, Indiana, West Virginia and California enacting bans on processed foods from SNAP purchases, or are exploring ways to reduce ultra-processed foods in the state, often with the support of Kennedy and Rollins and other federal leaders.
However, Joelle Johnson, deputy director for the food and nutrition consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, said despite growing debates about ultra-processed foods in the nation’s food programs, there is a lack of clear guidance from the federal government to retailers and food purchasers about what would and wouldn’t qualify as being ultra-processed.
“I would be surprised if we see bans of ultra-processed foods in SNAP, beyond candy and sweetened beverages, anytime soon,” she said.
Still, major snack and processed food companies, including Jack Link’s, are bracing for any changes that could harm their sales.
Consumer Brands Association, a Virginia-based organization representing major packaged food companies, including Tyson Foods and Coca-Cola, spent $42 million in lobbying over the past decade, focusing on issues including SNAP funding and dietary guidelines, among other issues.
Since 2023, the organization has worked with lobbyist Clete Willems, the deputy assistant of international economics during Trump’s first term and a former Obama administration official, according to lobbying disclosure documents.
Conagra Brands, the publicly traded, packaged food conglomerate that owns major brands such as Slim Jims, Orville Redenbacher, Birds Eye Frozen Foods and Reddi-Wip, spent over half a million dollars in the past year lobbying federal officials and has spent $4.6 million in lobbying in the past decade. Conagra and Consumer Brands Association did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In April, Link Snacks, the parent company of Jack Link’s, hired lobbying firm Bockorny Group, which has also represented the meatpacking company Agri-Beef Co. and pork industry publication National Hog Farmer. This was the first time the beef jerky giant has lobbied federal officials.
Lobbyists working for Jack Link’s include Pete Lawson, a former VP for Ford Motors and staff attorney for Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, and Eric Bohl, a former staffer for the congressional offices of Missouri Republicans Vicky Hartzler and Jason Smith, who worked on the 2014 Farm Bill.
This year, Link Snacks has spent $25,000 on lobbying the federal government to support “protein snacks in SNAP program” as well as issues with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, according to lobbying disclosure documents.
This story was originally published on Investigate Midwest.
Jack Link’s beef: How the snack giant is lobbying Trump and fighting the Make America Healthy Again movement is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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After a recent government study found that Native people are more than twice as likely to deal with food shortages and lack of nutritional meals than all U.S. households combined, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) made six recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aiming to improve food security. But a year later, the USDA, which agreed with the recommendations, has yet to act on them.
In July 2024, the GAO issued the recommendations in a report outlining opportunities the USDA could take to address challenges in federal nutrition programs. The report also asked Congress to consider “addressing in statute” the role of tribes in administering federal nutrition programs.
Barriers to food security vary from tribe to tribe, but commonalities exist, according to GAO director Kathryn Larin. In many cases the rural locations of tribal communities make access to a variety of nutritious foods difficult. “And the costs of the foods are higher than in more urban areas, partly due to transportation costs or other factors,” Larin told Buffalo’s Fire.
Those challenges have led to significant health disparities, including higher rates of diabetes and obesity among Indigenous people.
The way food is distributed and administered in tribal communities may be contributing to the problem.
After interviewing tribes and tribal organizations in seven states, as well as state and USDA officials, the GAO asked Congress to consider requiring states to consult with tribes when carrying out federal nutrition programs on reservations and in Native neighborhoods. Lawmakers have yet to address the matter.
Currently, tribes can administer several programs, including Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), if it’s determined that the state isn’t able to do so effectively.
In some cases, state programs or administrators are required to consult with tribes. “In other instances,” Larin said, “there’s no clear direction as to what the tribal role is. So we’ve asked that Congress address that explicitly.”
Some tribes told the GAO that their members were more likely to participate in programs the tribes administered, which tend to be located on reservations. Non-tribal programs are often off the reservation, which creates an additional burden of traveling.
“We know people are falling through the cracks,” said Mary Greene Trottier, a Spirit Lake member who serves as the director of its food distribution program and the National Association of Food Delivery Program on Indian Reservations.
Trottier says her people are struggling with diet, good nutrition and proper access to health services, and she estimates that 60-70% of schools on the Spirit Lake reservation have students in the free lunch program.
“We know the problems,” said Trottier, on the findings of the GAO study. “We know we can address the solutions.” She said tribal leaders and program directors are “boots on the ground” who just need to be heard and have their knowledge applied to improving food issues in tribal communities. “We know how to run our programs. We know what works, what doesn’t work.”
Like Trottier, Marlon Skendandore is a proponent for having tribes administer more food programs. He sees it as a move toward food sovereignty.
Before being elected as an Oneida tribal councilor, Skendandore worked as a food pantry manager for the tribe for six years, helping members across Wisconsin get fed “without red tape.” One of the GAO recommendations — that the USDA work to avoid dual participation in both the Food Distribution Program and SNAP and help qualified applicants get enrolled in a timely fashion — addresses what he sees as a “weird caveat” in the current system.
“Say you were on SNAP low income (and) you start building yourself up,” said Skenandore, describing how some SNAP recipients get work or otherwise improve their earnings. “You’re no longer income eligible.” He added there’s then a waiting period of 30 days before someone leaving SNAP can apply for the Food Distribution program. “I don’t know what the sense of 30 days of waiting is because they’re being administered by two totally different departments.”
The GAO has recommended that Food and Nutrition Service administrators study how switching from one program to another affects food security and then share that information with Congress.
Skenandore says both nutritious-food access and affordability are issues affecting the Oneida. Besides his work with the food pantry, he launched the Tribal Elder Food Box Program during the COVID-19 pandemic to alleviate food insecurity among Wisconsin tribes.
“We’re now up to making 2,400 boxes every couple of weeks,” he said.
Skenandore said that earlier this year funding cuts to the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program made the Tribal Elder Food Box Program’s future look bleak. But the program has since secured $3 million in state funding, which will allow it to continue for another two years.
The GAO also recommended that the USDA include national data on Native food security in an annual report and discontinue visual observation as a way to determine race and ethnicity for the Food Distribution Program on reservations. Finally, the GAO wants the agriculture secretary to identify and rectify gaps in outreach to tribal communities and make administering these programs more flexible in ways that support food security.
The USDA told Buffalo’s Fire in an email that it’s “working diligently” to address the GAO’s recommendations. But when asked about the timeline for implementing them, the press office did not provide one.
In a separate email, the USDA said the department and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are “committed to working with states, tribes, territories, and local government partners” to improve and modernize their programs, while “upholding our responsibility to program participants and American taxpayers.”
“The bottom line is that we feel strongly that the recommendations we made are key to addressing the issue of food insecurity in tribal communities,” the GAO’s Larin said, adding, “That’s why we’re committed to following up with the agency and hopefully encouraging them to implement the recommendations.”
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
In the meantime, both Trottier and Skenandore say there’s much to teach their respective communities about proper nutrition and health. This means adapting more traditional foods into their diet and scaling back fast food and ultra-processed items that either lack nutritional value or add to health problems. And with some traditional staples like wild rice and berries getting expensive, focusing on community gardens is seen as a way to help offset some of the issues.
“We have little kids that we’re really trying to instill with gardening and nutrition knowledge so they make better choices,” said Trottier. “We might not be able to change the older generation, but we’ve got a start with the younger generation. There’s always new hope to be found.”
This story was originally published by Buffalo’s Fire.
United States Government Accountability Office. (July 2024). Tribal Food Security
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health website
‘People are falling through the cracks’: Congress and USDA have not acted on recommendations to alleviate food insecurity among tribes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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Wisconsin would lose about $314 million in food assistance from the federal government under the massive budget bill passed by the U.S. House last week, according to an analysis of the proposed cuts by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The legislation, which President Donald Trump refers to as the “big, beautiful bill,” would require states to start matching federal funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It would also impose new work requirements on families with young children and older people, and it would require regular paperwork to prove exemptions from such requirements for some groups, such as families with special needs children.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Wisconsin Medicaid Director Bill Hanna said those changes amount to new red tape that could cause 90,000 Wisconsinites to lose some or all assistance.
He said that would put new pressure on nonprofits like food pantries and have ripple effects at the retailers where people spend what’s commonly known as food stamps.
The proposal would push many costs onto the state, where lawmakers and the governor are in the process of deciding the next two-year budget.
“There’s going to be more demand to put state money into a program that has been 100 percent federally funded for really its entire existence, which will strain the state’s ability to put its state dollars towards other things like education, our health care system and other important aspects of what we do with our state dollars,” Hanna said.
Those state costs are calculated based on a given state’s error rates, which tend to occur when a person’s income or residence changes unexpectedly. Hanna said that Wisconsin has a low error rate but is lumped into a bracket with states with much higher error rates, and charged accordingly.
“These errors are not fraud,” DHS wrote in a statement. “For the first time ever, Congress is proposing an extreme, zero tolerance policy for payment errors harming states like Wisconsin that consistently keep error rates low.”
States would also be responsible for covering new administrative costs and for providing job training to people newly obligated to fulfill work requirements.
All six of Wisconsin’s Republican congressmen voted for the bill. Both of Wisconsin’s Democratic House members voted against it.
Over the weekend, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, argued that anyone “legally receiving SNAP benefits should not see a single reduction in their SNAP.”
Hanna argued that’s because the federal government is “changing the definition of ‘legally receiving SNAP.’”
“They are adding additional red tape to folks to meet that by expanding those work requirements,” he said. “There certainly will be people who get caught up in the new red tape that they have to meet in order to achieve the benefits.”
Currently, about 700,000 Wisconsin residents — or an eighth of the state — receive SNAP.
This story was originally published by WPR.
Trump bill would cost Wisconsin $314 million in federal food aid is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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