The United States Department of Justice appears to believe it can litigate its way out of a physical drought. Federal antitrust regulators have opened a criminal investigation into Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS over surging beef prices at the supermarket counter.

The investigation, according to the probe's parameters, is examining "how beef companies buy cattle from ranchers through contracts that reference a pricing benchmark that some ranchers have complained is manipulated."

This is a classic administrative misdiagnosis of a supply-side catastrophe. The global beef industry is grappling with a structural shortage of cattle driven by severe, multi-year droughts entirely decimating grazing pastures and alfalfa yields. The physical inputs required to produce a steak have evaporated. Rather than pricing this ecological reality into consumer expectations, Washington is searching for a corporate scapegoat. Collusion is a convenient political narrative; the terminal depletion of Western aquifers is a mathematical certainty. Capital should ignore the subpoenas and price the protein scarcity accordingly.