What Is a Cash Cow?

Long ago, I heard of cash cows, but I did not understand what they were. In quick research this evening, I learned the definition of cash cow: “a consistently profitable business, property, or product whose profits are used to finance a company’s investments in other areas; one regarded or exploited as a reliable source of money” According to Virginia Allen at The Daily Signal, Mexican cartels have put a whole new meaning on the term cash cow. 

The Mexican cartels appear to be smuggling drugs into the U.S. inside cows, according to sources interviewed at the border in Texas and New Mexico last week. The cartels are known to use cattle cars to smuggle drugs, but also seem to be using the cattle themselves as couriers.

“When they do the spaying process, they’ll ship the drugs in the cows,” Hudspeth County, Texas, Sheriff Arvin West told The Daily Signal, adding the cartels are nothing if not “creative.”

Sporting a cowboy hat and a badge pinned to his chest, West said the cartels began using bovine couriers for drugs when Mexico started shipping more heifers – young female cows that have never given birth – into the U.S. due to shrinking U.S. cattle inventory.

The U.S. imported more than 1.2 million head of cattle from Mexico in 2024, a little over 400,000 of which were heifers, according to Oklahoma State University. U.S. regulation requires every heifer be spayed in Mexico before entering the U.S., and the cartels found a way to exploit this U.S. policy.

Former New Mexico state Sen. Steve McCutcheon is a cattle rancher himself and explained the practice to The Daily Signal during a visit in Luna County, New Mexico. The cartels have a network of livestock buyers in Mexico who pay cash for cattle, McCutcheon said. When the heifers are spayed, if the cow is being used for smuggling, a vacuum sealed bag of drugs is inserted inside before the animal’s flank is stapled back together, he explained.

Dr. Gary Thrasher, a large-animal veterinarian based near the border in Arizona, spent over a decade working with veterinarians in Mexico to train them how to properly spay heifers. Cattle are not prone to infection in the same way horses or other large animals are, Thrasher told The Daily Signa on a call Monday.

“It’s really a rare thing for a cow to have an infection,” Thrasher said, explaining that it would be possible for a cow to be physically unaffected by a sealed bag of drugs inside it. While putting a bag of drugs in a heifer would not be difficult, removal would  be challenging, Thrasher said, adding that it would also be expensive, but after spending years working on both sides of the border, the veterinarian said, the cartels “may be doing it.”

The cartels operate their own trucking companies that are legitimate American businesses, but are “owned and funded by the cartels,” McCutcheon said. While the cattle’s papers are checked at the border, detection of drugs inside animals poses a unique challenge to Customs and Border Protection officials.

Once the cattle make it through a port of entry, the cartels remove the drugs from the cattle in the U.S. before the animals are sold in a legal sale. Then, the cartels trade the drugs for cash in the U.S., the drug money is hidden inside the trucks that go back into Mexico, and that cash can then be used to buy more cattle, and the cycle repeats, McCutcheon explained….

Using cattle and cattle cars to smuggle the drugs is not only appealing to cartels due to the detection challenges, but cattle cars tend to move faster than other trucks, according to James Frietze, who spent 25 years serving in the New Mexico State Police, retiring in 2019.

During transport, cows lose weight because they are not eating, Frietze explained. The faster the livestock can reach their destination, the less weight they lose, the healthier they stay, and the more money the seller makes. Likewise, more drugs moving into the U.S. faster also means more money for the cartels.

Frietze explained that the cartels are doing less human smuggling because of actions by the Trump administration, so they are expected to do more drug smuggling. They are also expected to use more tunnels to smuggle drugs into the U.S. due to the use of drones by U.S. law enforcement. Even though smuggling drugs in cows is not spread widely, there is little doubt that the cartels would try it.