During a 2019 CNN town hall meeting, while Harris was vying for the Presidential election, she told a voter who asked President Harris if she supported revising the nation’s dietary guidelines to reduce red meat consumption, suggesting that climate change is connected to the “overproduction of red meat.”
“I think the point that you’re raising in a broader context, which is that, as a nation, we actually have to have a real priority at the highest level of government around what we eat and in terms of healthy eating because we have a problem in America,” Harris said. “We can talk about the subject of this conversation, we can talk about the amount of sugar in everything, we could talk about soda. We could go on and on.”
“So the answer is yes,” she continued. “I will also say this: the balance that we have to strike here, frankly, is about what government can and should do around creating incentives, and then banning certain behaviors. Just to be very honest with you, I love cheeseburgers from time to time, right? I just do. 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 effect of our eating habits on our environment. We have to do a much better job at that, and the government has to do a much better job at that.”
“Would you support changing the dietary guidelines, the food pyramid … reduce red meat specifically?” CNN’s Erin Burnett asked.
“Yes, I would,” Harris said.
The conversation is something that former President Donald Trump has latched onto, accusing his Democratic rival of wanting to ban red meat.
“Kamala even wants to pass laws to outlaw red meat, to slow climate change,” said Trump during a campaign in North Carolina. “You know what that means? That means no more cows.”
