Here's industry reports
https://www.nationalbeefwire.com/doctors-group-applauds-comm...
https://www.wattagnet.com/business-markets/policy-legislatio...
And straight up lobbying groups
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/new-dietary-guideline...
https://www.meatinstitute.org/press/recommend-prioritizing-p...
Lobbying groups, putting out press releases, claiming victory...
Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Just because you might like the results doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell
Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those. In fact they had a hilariously easy time adapting to the consumer trend because all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways. The first two stages, rearing and pasturing, didn’t change because they were already “free range” and “grass fed”. Half of the farmland in the US is pastureland and leaving animals in the field to eat grass was always the cheapest way to rear and grow them. They only really get fed corn and other food at the end to fatten them up for human consumption.
The dirty not-so-secret is that free range/grass fed cows eat almost the exact same diet as regular cows, they just eat a little more grass because they’re in the field more during finishing. They’re still walking up to troughs of feed, because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable and grow quite slower.
True grass fed beef is generally called “grass finished” beef and it’s unregulated so you won’t find it at a supermarket. They taste gamier and usually have a metallic tang that I quite honestly doubt would ever be very popular. The marbling is also noticeably different and less consistent. Grain finished beef became popular in the 1800s and consumers in the West have strongly preferred it since.
I’m not sure you can even find a cow in the entire world that isn’t “grass fed”. Calves need the grass for their gut microbiomes to develop properly.
Australia is more interesting because it’s 50% grass finished but I could never find a source on how much of that was exported to SEA or US and what products it went to.
Another country that predominantly grass finishes is Brazil but they export mostly to China. Again I couldn’t find a source on how much of exports to the US go to meat products (we source a lot of our hamburger meat and pet food from random countries). I remember in all three cases very little is exported to the EU.
It's a "regional quirk" that applies to far more of the world than US tastes, by my reckoning. Even within the US you'll find plenty of people who don't prefer bland beef, and outside it's just... some parts of Western Europe that share the bland obsession?