SAFE Act Grants USDA New Power to Negotiate Trade Deals During Disease Outbreaks: Will Exports Trump Safety?

The Safe American Food Exports Act of 2025, or the SAFE Act, is essentially a government playbook for keeping U.S. livestock and meat exports moving even when there’s an animal disease scare at home. It gives the Secretary of Agriculture new authority to negotiate specific trade agreements with foreign buyers during an outbreak, aiming to prevent those countries from slamming the door on all U.S. products.

The New Trade Playbook

This bill (SEC. 2) is all about damage control for the export market. Right now, if there’s a serious animal disease—like a major bird flu outbreak—many countries might just halt all imports of U.S. poultry, regardless of where the outbreak occurred. The SAFE Act changes this by empowering the Secretary of Agriculture, working closely with the U.S. Trade Representative and other agencies, to negotiate deals based on modern science. These deals focus on strategies like “regionalization” or “zoning.” In plain English, that means convincing trading partners to only block imports from the specific geographic area affected by the disease, rather than the entire country. The bill specifically requires that these negotiations use the “latest accepted global research advances,” which is meant to keep the U.S. competitive and science-based.

What It Means for the Supply Chain

For the agricultural sector—the farmers, ranchers, and meat processors—this is a big deal. If an outbreak hits a localized area, say a few counties in Iowa, the vast majority of producers across the country can keep selling overseas. This stabilizes prices and protects the income of producers who are nowhere near the crisis. For example, if a beef processing plant in Texas is exporting to Japan, a disease outbreak in a small herd in Montana shouldn't automatically shut down that Texas trade route. This provision is designed to keep those supply lines open and predictable.

The Trade-Off: Speed vs. Safety

While the goal is to “lessen the blow” on exports, this new authority raises a few questions about priorities. The bill grants significant, specialized negotiation power to the USDA during a crisis, which is usually the USTR’s territory. The speed required to negotiate these regionalization deals—to prevent immediate trade bans—could potentially put pressure on negotiators to prioritize trade continuity over the most stringent public health measures. For domestic consumers, the concern isn't necessarily about the safety of the food they buy at the grocery store, but whether the rush to keep the export machine running might mean less transparency or a slightly lower bar for containment standards accepted by foreign countries under duress. The bill is clear that this new power doesn't force the USTR to make these disease-related agreements a mandatory part of other trade deals, keeping the focus strictly on crisis management.