Retail Beef

The Ground Beef Paradox: Record Demand Meets a Shrinking Domestic Supply

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:43:54 GMT

As U.S. beef production tightens and retail prices hit historic highs, the American consumer’s appetite for ground beef is reaching a 20-year peak. While total beef production fell 3.6% in 2025, a surge in imports allowed per capita consumption to hold steady at 59.8 lb. — with ground beef claiming its largest share of the plate in decades.

Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University Extension livestock marketing specialist, says, in 2025, the decrease in beef production was offset by increased net beef imports to hold total per capita beef consumption steady with the previous year.

“Per capita beef consumption for 2025 was estimated at 59.8 lb. per person,” he explains. “Total beef production thus far in 2026 is down 6.2% and is expected to be down 3% to 4% percent annually for the year with per capita beef consumption declining despite additional beef imports this year.”

(Oklahoma State University)

A breakdown of beef consumption, Figure 1, shows that per capita supplies of ground beef increased in 2025 to the highest level since 2004. Ground beef supplies were estimated at 28.6 lb. per person, up 0.61 lb. per person. Remaining beef consumption (carcass) was estimated at 31.2 lb., down 0.44 lb. per person.

The Ground Beef Pivot: Consumers Trade Down as Prices Rise

Despite record-breaking wholesale prices, ground beef remains the “safety valve” for the American household. Data shows a shift in consumer behavior: as steaks become luxury items, shoppers are pivoting to the versatility of ground products.

Figure 2 shows that ground beef currently makes up the highest percentage of total beef consumption back to 2003 and, according to Peel, is probably at a record level in the U.S.

(Oklahoma State University)

“Ground beef consumption has increased simultaneously with record ground beef prices,” Peel says. “This happens because ground beef is still the beef product that consumers turn to when beef prices generally rise. Since 2022, the average wholesale price across 39 beef products has been an increase of over 44%. However, wholesale ground beef prices have increased over 57% over the same period.”

The Math of the Lean Deficit: Why One Steer Needs Four Cows

Peel stresses the challenges of meeting ground beef demand are substantial. Ground beef utilizes fatty trimmings from fed cattle and lean trimmings from cull cows and other sources. He explains there are a multitude of ways to prepare ground beef mixtures but a ratio of 7 lb. of 90% lean to 1 lb. of 50% lean is representative of a common 85% lean ground beef mixture.

The math currently isn’t working in favor of domestic supply:

Cow Slaughter Collapse: Total cow slaughter dropped 28.7% between 2022 and 2025.
Non-Fed Production: This has resulted in a 24.8% decrease in the domestic production of lean processing beef.
The Imbalance: One fed steer produces enough fatty trim to require the lean meat of three to four cull cows to create a marketable ground beef blend. With fewer cows entering the supply chain, the industry is facing a massive “lean deficit.”

Global Solutions: Imports Now Account for Nearly 40% of Ground Beef Trim

Not enough cow beef is available and lean supplies are routinely supplemented by imported lean.

“Over the past 20 years, an average of 25% of total trim used for ground beef has been from imported beef,” Peel says. “In 2025, imported trim accounted for an estimated 38.7% of total ground beef trim, leading to the domestic lean share of trim at the lowest level in more than 20 years — 61.3%.”

(Oklahoma State University)

Increased imported trim in the current market is important to support the value of fatty trimmings from fed cattle, Peel emphasizes.

“Maintaining the ground beef market is critical in the current situation,” Peel summarizes. “Consumer demand for ground beef is high and the ability of beef to be competitive with other proteins depends on ground beef — and fast food demand for hamburgers, in particular.”

For the cattle industry, the message is clear: ground beef is no longer just a byproduct — it is the primary driver of beef’s competitiveness against other proteins.

The Shrinking Slice: Farmers Receive Less Than 6 Cents of Every Food Dollar

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:30:44 GMT

For the past two years, USDA has estimated farmers and ranchers received less than 6 cents of every food dollar. In 2023, that was 5.9 cents, and using the latest data from 2024, it’s 5.8 cents.

“Our oldest data point right now is 2007 [USDA updated the data series] and that’s 14.7 cents per dollar, and now we’re down all the way to 11.8 cents per dollar,” says Faith Parum, economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “So we’ve really seen that decline year after year. It reflects how much of the value of things in the grocery store or when you go out to eat is going to other parts of the supply chain and not necessarily to farmers and ranchers.”

Livestock vs. Crops: A Widening Gap

The aggregate decline masks a widening gap between sectors. While the overall farmer share is down, livestock and crop producers are seeing divergent trends:

Crop Farmers: Share dropped from 2.9 cents to 2.5 cents (a 2.5% year-over-year decrease).
Livestock Producers: Share increased from 3 cents to 3.3 cents.

“Overall, the farmer share is down. But we have those two markets really at odds,” Parum says. “We’ve seen that tale of two farm economies where our livestock producers maybe have seen a little bit of better days than they had had in the past, while our row crop farmers and our specialty crop farmers are really facing strong headwinds in the market.”

Effect at the Farm Gate

As highlighted by USDA, farm finances are quickly strained when farmers/ranchers are capturing a small percentage of the food dollar and even modest swings in commodity prices and/or input prices take place.

Parum adds, “when we talk about the health of our farms and the health of future generations on the farm, and being economically viable and sustainable and being able to keep their operations open, the trends we’re seeing right now are really hard for those farmers. Our ranchers are seeing a little bit of better days right now with high beef prices, but that’s not going to last forever, and with production expenses continuing to increase, we’re really going to see that that question come up of, what is sustainable if, if these dollars we’re spending in the grocery store aren’t making it back to our farmers.”

Where Does the Money Get Distributed?

The key takeaway: farmers produce the raw commodities that make food production, however, the price is clearly more determined by what happens after the products first leave the farm.

The USDA Food Dollar Series tracks how each dollar is spent by consumers and then divides it across the industries contributing to the value in the supply chain, such as farming, food processing, transportation, packaging, wholesaling, retail and food service. As noted by the USDA, with each step in the process, the additional services, labor, transportation and infrastructure add value and increase costs to the final food product.

USDA’s Economic Research Service Food Dollar Series shows in 2024, farmers received 11.8 cents of every dollar spent on domestically produced food, the remaining 88.2 cents of the food dollar went toward the ‘marketing bill’, which includes costs associated with food processing, transportation, packaging, wholesaling, retailing and food service. Over time, this shift illustrates how an increasing share of food spending is driven by services and supply chain activities rather than farm production itself.

Groceries Leave the Most on The Table For Farmers

Farmers’ share of consumer food spending varies widely depending on the type of food purchased. For example, the farm share of the food-at-home dollar was 18.5 cents in 2024, up slightly from 18.4 cents in 2023. But even in this category it means only than one-fifth of what consumers spend on groceries goes back to farmers.

As you may expect, products with minimal processing, require less of the value to be retained in that part of the food system, and therefore return a larger share of the food dollar to producers.

“The highest commodity that gets the most of that food dollar is fresh eggs,” Parum notes. “That’s just because there’s limited labor to process that food.”

Examples include:

Fresh Eggs: 69.1 cents (+6% from 2023)
Beef: 52.2 cents (+4.8%)
Fresh Milk: 50.8 cents (+5.6%)
Pork: 23.7 cents (+7.2%)
Poultry (+3.1%)
Fish (+2.8%)
Tree nuts and peanuts (-1.7%)
Fresh fruits and vegetables (unchanged)
Bakery Products: 4.8 cents (-9.4%)
Soft Drinks/Bottled Water: 1.3 cents (-7.1%)

98% of U.S. Households Are Buying Meat: New Report Shows Record Sales

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:02:01 GMT

Meat sales hit a record high of $112 billion in 2025, with a pound increase of 2%. Millennials and Gen Z were a driving force behind the growth, according to the 21st annual Power of Meat report released today at the Annual Meat Conference by the Meat Institute and FMI — The Food Industry Association .

According to Circana, more than 98% of American households purchase meat, and 45% of shoppers are actively trying to prepare more meals containing meat or poultry. According to 210 Analytics, of the five dinners shoppers prepare at home per week on average, 90% already contain a portion of meat or poultry.

“The meat department is outperforming because it delivers what shoppers want right now: protein, flexibility, value and taste,” says Rick Stein, FMI vice president of fresh foods. “Retailers that balance convenient ground options with premium, indulgent cuts will be best positioned to capture both budget-conscious and experience-driven shoppers.”

Which Generations Are Driving Meat Sales Growth?

Millennials and Gen Z shoppers accounted for 67% of unit growth. They are more likely than other shoppers to be actively trying to prepare more meals containing meat or poultry — Gen Z 50% and Millennials 57%. In 81% of households with children, kids have some level of influence on meat and poultry purchase decisions. Seventy-two percent of shoppers with teens at home say their teens request meat and poultry, far ahead of requests for protein bars, shakes and powders.

How is AI Changing How Consumers Buy Meat?

Younger generations also lead the way in using social media and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms for meal inspiration. Twenty-four percent of Gen Z and Millennial shoppers use AI tools, compared to 10% of Gen X and 4% of Boomers. Overall, 15% of shoppers use AI tools, a 650% increase compared to just two years ago.

Is Meat Still Considered Part of a Healthy Diet?

Meat and poultry continue to feature positively in shoppers’ health and nutrition perceptions, with 77% of shoppers agreeing that meat and poultry are part of a healthy diet, up more than 20% since 2020. GLP-1 users over-index versus non-users for eating somewhat or a lot more meat than last year (161) and for frequently including meat and poultry in snacking occasions (171).

“Americans are more focused on making smart food choices than ever before, and this latest Power of Meat report reinforces meat’s clear and irreplaceable role at the center of healthy, convenient, affordable meals today and for generations to come,” summarizes Julie Anna Potts, Meat Institute president.

Read more about how the food pyramid puts protein back on top:

New Dietary Guidelines Move Food Pyramid Closer to the Farm

The New Food Pyramid Flips the Script

The Power of Meat study was conducted by 210 Analytics on behalf of FMI and the Meat Foundation and sponsored by Cryovac Brand Food Packaging. Sales and purchase dynamics data are provided by Circana for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 28, 2025.

Your Next Read:
Consumer Craze for Protein Drives Beef Demand
Why Aren’t High Beef Prices Causing Sticker Shock With Consumers?
What Do Consumers Buy in the Meat Aisle When Money is Tight?
Global Protein Demand Surges 2% Annually as Producers Navigate Volatile Markets

2026 Beef Economics: Consumers Continue to Demand More Protein

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:21:14 GMT

Consumers still want beef. They still prefer beef. They still tell every survey they want more protein.

But 2026 is shaping up as a year where preferences collide with price fatigue, and the result is not “beef demand disappears.” The result is beef demand shifts.

The protein tailwind is real, but it does not guarantee more steak nights

The high-protein trend is not a fad anymore. Cargill’s Protein Profile found 61% of consumers reported increasing their protein intake in 2024, up from 48% in 2019.

And the latest dietary guidance conversation has become more protein-forward, at least in narrative. One recent analysis of the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines discussion points to a suggested protein range of 1.2–1.6 g/kg/day, which is materially higher than older “minimum intake” framing.

Here is the BBBP translation: A protein tailwind does not automatically mean more beef demand. In a high-price environment, it often means protein purchases shift from within, and the mix moves toward protein-per-dollar purchases.

Which leads to the next problem.

Price fatigue is the demand curve’s slow leak

We do not need to debate whether beef is expensive. Just go to the grocery store or order a burger.

USDA’s Food Price Outlook notes that in November 2025, farm-level cattle prices were 23.9% higher than a year earlier, and wholesale beef prices were 15.1% higher year over year.

That is the upstream pressure. At the checkout line, consumers respond the same way they always do.

They stretch servings. They wait for features. They buy what fits the weekly budget, not what fits a perfect macro plan.

A tight domestic supply year makes this more acute. ERS projects per-capita beef availability dropping slightly in 2026. That is not catastrophic. It is just enough tightening to keep prices sticky and keep fatigue building.

GLP-1s: protein share up, total intake down and “more protein” is relative

GLP-1s are going to be part of the 2026 demand story, but not in a simplistic way. The direction is pretty clear:

GLP-1s reduce caloric intake for users (by 30-50% in most cases).
Users and clinicians often emphasize “protein first” to preserve lean mass.

The nuance is the part people miss. Here is the math:

(The Big Bad Beef Packer)

If total calories fall, a higher protein share can still result in flat or lower absolute protein intake, even while protein outperforms other categories in relative terms.

From a market mechanics standpoint, GLP-1s are more likely to:

Favor smaller portions
Favor planned meals over impulse buys
Favor ground beef and value cuts that fit high-protein meals without a high-ticket checkout

IQVIA has also pointed out that U.S. GLP-1 supply constraints eased, with FDA declaring shortages resolved in April 2025 and enforcement discretion for compounded versions ending by May 2025, which matters because wider availability increases the odds that GLP-1 adoption shows up in consumer behavior during 2026.

Will consumers trade out of beef to chicken and pork?

Some might trade out a meal or two to competing proteins. But the bigger story is still trade-down within beef. The ERS per-capita chart is a useful compass: beef availability is projected lower in 2026, while pork and poultry availability is projected higher.

(The Big Bad Packer)

When cheaper proteins have more availability, the market naturally invites substitution. But beef’s advantage is preference and versatility. That is why substitution often starts as:

Chicken and pork pick up incremental share
While beef defends its position through ground, roasts, and value steaks

Foodservice will also feel a similar pain to retail

Foodservice demand tends to follow a similar path in contraction years.

High-end steakhouses can hold better because their customer is less price sensitive.
Mid-tier and casual dining feel it because steak is a check-size driver and a margin risk at the same time.
QSR and fast casual lean into value, which pushes more demand toward grind and lower-cost beef applications.

In other words, foodservice reinforces the same theme: mix shifts toward value, and premium holds where the customer can afford it.

The 2026 trade-down map inside beef

Looking at beef consumers, we can break them down into Value-seekers (often low income), Mainstream planners (often lower middle and middle income), and Premium loyalists (often upper middle and higher income brackets). Here is why each matter:

1. Value-seekers (often lower income, but also “budget-first” households)
They do not “trade down” from tenderloin. They are already living in value. As prices rise, the move is typically:

From lower value beef cuts toward more ground beef
With some probability of trading out to chicken or pork if the price gap widens

A simple price snapshot shows why we could see trade out to other proteins: ground beef averaged $6.687/lb in Dec 2025, while chicken breast averaged $4.153/lb, and pork chops averaged $4.298/lb. That spread is the consumer’s decision tree.

(The Big Bad Beef Packer)

As price spreads continue to grow, one can imagine it will eventually lead to some form of trade out of the beef sector into pork or poultry.

2. Mainstream planners (lower middle and middle income, “I still want steak, just not that steak”)
This is where you see the cut-level substitution:

Ribeye, strip, tenderloin gets replaced by sirloin, flank, skirt, and more roast usage
Steak night remains, but it potentially becomes a different steak

They are not leaving beef. They are optimizing beef.

3. Premium loyalists (upper middle and higher income, plus “steak is part of the lifestyle” buyers)
They keep buying steaks. Some trade down on frequency, not on cut. That is why the top end can look resilient even when the middle of the case is shifting.

Trade-down within beef during contraction years is inevitable

A lot of people talk about trading down like it is a demand collapse. It is not.

In a tight supply year, trading down is simply the consumer doing what consumers do. They adjust the mix so beef stays in the cart, even when the steak case starts feeling like a car payment.

As higher income consumers continue to seek out the shortage of available steaks, the price will increase. This will push middle income consumers to purchase more of the roasts and non-traditional steak items. This, in turn, will push lower income consumers to purchase even more ground beef.

And here is the key balancing point for 2026.

There will likely be more lean supply available through imports, which supports ground beef availability. USDA is forecasting higher U.S. beef imports in 2026, and USDA-FAS is also forecasting imports up, specifically noting tight domestic supplies and lean processing dynamics as drivers.

That matters because imported lean trim is the pressure-release valve. It helps keep more beef moving through the grind even when domestic supplies are tight. It does not magically make beef cheap, but it does help keep beef on the table.

So no, trading down is not bearish beef (at least, not yet). It is the market doing the work of balancing the constrained supply.

Consumer demand conclusion: 2026 is a mix war, not a demand collapse

Beef demand is strong. But strong does not mean invincible or immune to change.

In 2026, the demand curve is most likely to shift through:

Price fatigue driving trade-down inside beef
Protein-forward narratives supporting beef’s relevance, but not guaranteeing more premium cuts
GLP-1 behavior nudging consumers toward smaller, protein-first meals that lean value
Some potential trade-out to chicken and pork where affordability gaps widen

If you sell the whole animal, 2026 is not about whether consumers want beef. It is about aligning cuts and grinds with commensurate values that speak to each consumer category.

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

Why Beef Prices Remain High Despite Record-Low Cattle Supplies

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 18:37:38 GMT

Consumer’s demand for beef — not just shrinking cattle numbers — is playing a central role in shaping prices and profitability across the U.S. beef supply chain, according to research from Kansas State University agricultural economists.

Brian Coffey, who co-authored a recent paper examining the U.S. retail beef market, says a microeconomic assessment shows consumer preferences have become a powerful driver of market outcomes, even during a period of historically tight supplies.

“A microeconomic assessment is really about using economic theory and models to help explain what we’re seeing in the real world,” Coffey says. “We make simplifying assumptions and apply economic frameworks to real data so we can isolate what’s driving changes in prices and quantities.”

In this case, Coffey and co-author Glynn Tonsor analyzed retail-level beef data from recent years to better understand how supply and demand interacted as the cattle industry moved through a major contraction. Their findings suggest demand has been stronger than many expected.

The current trajectory began in 2019, Coffey says, when the U.S. beef cow herd reached its most recent peak. Since then, drought, market conditions and other pressures have combined to trigger rapid herd liquidation.

“Since 2019, the number of beef cows in the U.S. has gotten smaller and smaller,” Coffey summarizes. “That’s been front and center when we think about the cattle and beef supply chain.”

By 2023, the industry was still firmly in a liquidation phase. Fewer cows meant fewer animals available for feeding, and cow slaughter also declined compared with 2022, creating another supply shock. Yet the total amount of beef available to consumers held steady.

The reason, Coffey explains, was innovation. Advances in genetics, feeding methods and technology allowed feedlots to finish cattle at heavier weights and produce larger carcasses with more high-quality beef. Imports of lean trim also played a key role, helping maintain ground beef supplies — a cornerstone of the U.S. market.

“As an industry, we really stepped up,” Coffey says. “We had fewer animals, but we were able to offset that with heavier weights and imports.”

The result was that total retail beef availability in 2024 was actually higher than in 2023, even though individual cuts varied in availability. Prices, however, moved higher.

“Between 2023 and 2024, we did see a price increase,” Coffey says. “That’s interesting because basic economics tells us that when supply goes up, prices usually go down. Instead, we had more beef, and people paid more for it.”

That divergence points directly to demand. Consumers, Coffey says, were willing to pay higher prices, signaling a stronger underlying value for beef.

Looking ahead, Coffey expects 2025 data to show a modest decline in retail beef supply — likely a few percent — as production efficiencies can no longer fully offset declining cattle numbers. Prices, he said, are again expected to rise.

The key takeaway for producers is clear.

“Demand really matters,” Coffey says. “What consumers think about beef feeds all the way back up the supply chain and determines profitability. Strong consumer demand right now is providing price support beyond what supply factors alone would explain.”

Your Next Reads:
Consumer Craze for Protein Drives Beef Demand
Consumers Confirm Protein is In: Meat Continues to Have Its Moment on the Plate
How Many Minutes Does a Consumer Have to Work to Buy A Pound of Ground Beef?

Hot Dog! Smithfield Goes All-In to Acquire Nathan’s Famous Brand

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:42:06 GMT

Fast Facts: The Financials
Purchase Price: $102 per share in cash.
Enterprise Value: Approximately $450 million.
Valuation Multiple: 12.4x LTM adjusted EBITDA (10.0x post-synergies).
Synergies: $9 million in projected annual cost savings by the second anniversary of closing.
Expected Closing: First half of 2026.
Board Support: Directors representing ~29.9% of shares have agreed to vote in favor.

Smithfield Foods has entered into an agreement to acquire all of Nathan’s Famous’ issued and outstanding shares for $102 per share in cash, an enterprise value of approximately $450 million. Smithfield Foods has held an exclusive license since March 2014 from Nathan’s Famous within the U.S., Canada and Sam’s Clubs in Mexico to manufacture, distribute, market and sell “Nathan’s Famous” branded hot dogs, sausages, corned beef and certain other ancillary products through the retail channel, and to manufacture and distribute “Nathan’s Famous” branded hot dog and sausage products for the foodservice channel.

Nathan’s Famous started as a hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1916 by immigrant Nathan Handwerker with $300 loan from two friends and his wife’s secret spice recipe, according to the Nathan’s Famous website. Originally selling the hot dogs for 5 cents, the iconic food became famous nationwide under the leadership of Handwerker’s son, Murray.

How Will This Impact Pork and Beef Producers?

Successfully closing this acquisition secures Smithfield’s rights to this brand and maximizes the Nathan’s Famous brand growth across the retail and foodservice channels, the company says.

“Given the synergies that a major pork producer/packer/processor brings, adding this to the big Smithfield portfolio of brands, and combined with its marketing muscle, should be long-term positive for demand,” says Altin Kalo, lead economist at Steiner Consulting. “But in the near term, I don’t see how this has a significant impact on the pricing landscape. My understanding is that the mechanics of procurement/production will not change in the near term.”

Glynn Tonsor, professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University, agrees and says, “It is not immediately clear this will have a large impact on markets nor livestock producers.”

But from a long-term perspective, Kalo says there is a continuation of the vertical integration that has been taking place in the industry over the decades.

“It tends to be far more pervasive in chicken but pork is not far behind, and more beef packers are adding value-added capabilities,” Kalo says. “In my view, such acquisitions allow major companies, like Smithfield, to buffer the margin pressures they may experience in certain segments of the business given they have multiple profit centers along the supply chain. This should make them more competitive relative to smaller producers/processors that have more exposure to the cyclical nature of their business.”

Smithfield President and CEO Shane Smith says the Nathan’s Famous acquisition is a “meaningful step in the progression of Smithfield Foods allowing us to own all of the top brands in our Packaged Meats portfolio and unlock new growth opportunities for our largest segment.”

Since entering into their licensing agreement with Nathan’s Famous in 2014, Smithfield has made significant investments to build and grow the Nathan’s Famous brand.

“With our manufacturing scale, marketing strength, product innovation capabilities, and retail and foodservice channel expertise, acquiring Nathan’s Famous will allow us to take the brand to new heights,” Smith says.

Driving Growth

The acquisition of Nathan’s Famous is expected to drive “growth of the high margin Packaged Meats segment by harnessing the powerful Nathan’s Famous brand and fueling it with an expanded portfolio of innovative products that build customer awareness across Smithfield’s well-established retail and foodservice sales channels.” Among other things, the company also anticipates increased foodservice sales volume by placing this channel under the direct management of Smithfield’s expert team and leveraging Smithfield’s established, scaled infrastructure.

(Smithfield Foods)

“This combination is a natural fit and provides a compelling valuation for Nathan’s Famous stockholders,” says Eric Gatoff, CEO of Nathan’s Famous. “As a long-time partner, Smithfield has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to investing in and growing our brand while maintaining the utmost quality and customer service standards.”

According to Smithfield, the transaction is not subject to a financing contingency and will be funded by cash on hand. The transaction closing is expected to occur in the first half of 2026. Members of the Nathan’s Famous Board of Directors who in the aggregate own or control approximately 29.9% of the outstanding shares of Nathan’s Famous common stock have entered into a voting agreement pursuant to which they have agreed to vote their shares of common stock of Nathan’s Famous in favor of the transaction.

The New Food Pyramid Flips the Script

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:23:25 GMT

If you grew up in the 90s, the original Food Guide Pyramid was basically burned into your retinas: a wide base of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta, then fruits and vegetables, then dairy and “meat,” and at the tiny tip, fats and sweets.

That picture did more than decorate classrooms. It shaped a whole era of product development, menu planning, and “health” marketing.

Now, in January 2026, the federal government is rolling out a new, inverted pyramid under the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2025 to 2030) that’s pushing the opposite message: prioritize whole foods and protein, and stop living on refined carbohydrates and highly processed snacks. The document is short, blunt, and intentionally practical: less philosophy, more marching orders.

And here’s the part that matters for beef: these guidelines are not just consumer advice( consumers are typically slow to change their dietary habits on their own). They’re positioned as the foundation for federal feeding programs, including school cafeterias, military and veteran meals, and other nutrition programs. In other words, this isn’t only going to influence grocery carts in the beginning. It’s going to influence government contracts across the country.

That’s where the demand curve starts to move.

The 1992 pyramid didn’t “cause” ultra processed America, but it made it easy

Let’s be fair about history. The 1992 pyramid didn’t tell people to eat Pop Tarts. But it did align perfectly with the low fat, high carb era that rewarded food companies for turning “healthy eating” into industrial math:

Start with grains and starches
Strip out anything inconvenient
Add sugar, binders, stabilizers, and shelf life
Advertise it as “heart healthy”
Call it a win

Even the official pyramid framework emphasized grains heavily, with the classic 6 to 11 servings per day guidance commonly associated with that era.

And what did America actually do over the decades that followed? We didn’t become a nation of people eating 11 servings of whole grains and a sensible portion of lean meat. We became a nation where ultra processed food became the default operating system.

The CDC’s most recent national data shows Americans are getting about 55% of daily calories from ultra processed foods (Aug 2021 to Aug 2023). Longer term research lines up with that reality:

Among U.S. adults, ultra processed foods increased from 53.5% of calories (2001 to 2002) to 57.0% (2017 to 2018).
Among U.S. youth, ultra processed foods increased from 61.4% (1999) to 67.0% (2018).

So the honest takeaway is this: The food pyramid of 1992 didn’t singlehandedly create the modern diet. But the “carbs as foundation” messaging fit perfectly into a system that industrialized food.

What the 2025 to 2030 guidelines are saying now, and why it’s different

The new Dietary Guidelines place a stake in the ground on three fronts:

Protein goes first: The document explicitly calls for prioritizing protein foods “at every meal” and gives a higher, bodyweight based target: 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
Refined carbs and highly processed foods get targeted directly: It calls to significantly reduce refined carbohydrates (white bread, packaged breakfast items, flour tortillas, crackers) and to avoid highly processed salty sweet foods (chips, cookies, candy), pushing people toward nutrient dense, home prepared meals.
Fats get a cultural nod, without removing the ceiling: It recommends prioritizing oils with essential fatty acids (example: olive oil), while also naming butter or beef tallow as “other options.” It still keeps the familiar note that saturated fat “should not exceed 10% of total daily calories.”

Whether you love or hate the optics around this rollout, the policy direction is clear:

Whole foods up. Refined carbs down. Protein front and center.

The procurement angle: this doesn’t stay in your kitchen

Both HHS and USDA messaging around this release explicitly frames the guidelines as impacting federal procurement and feeding programs, including school meals and military and veteran meals. Bloomberg Government’s coverage goes further, describing the guidelines as the basis for programs feeding tens of millions across schools, military bases, and veterans’ hospitals, and notes the sheer scale of government food assistance spending.

This matters because when guidelines change, institutions don’t “debate” them on social media. They translate them into:

menu requirements
nutrition standards
bid specs
vendor compliance
eligible product lists

That’s how nutrition guidance becomes demand.

Why that points to ground beef, and not ribeyes

If you tell institutional foodservice operators, schools, bases, cafeterias, hospitals, “protein at every meal,” you’ve given them a constraint system:

Protein grams per plate must rise
Budgets do not magically rise
Operational simplicity still rules (cook, hold, serve, portion at scale)

That combination does not send buyers running to ribeyes and tenderloins.

It pushes them toward cost effective, versatile, scalable proteins, and in beef, that means ground beef.

Ground beef works in everything. It can be blended into dozens of menu formats. It’s familiar. It’s easy to portion. And it fits the “whole foods, less processed” narrative far better than many industrial, formulated alternatives.

So when the government says “more protein plus real food,” the most likely beef beneficiary is not steaks, but ground beef.

Now the constraint: herd levels and the lean trim gap

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about ground beef: it’s a balancing act.

Most of the U.S. fed cattle system produces a lot of fat trim, and ground beef production requires sufficient lean trim to blend into desired lean points. When lean trim supply tightens, the system doesn’t magically invent it. It imports it.

The USDA’s official inventory report showed all cattle and calves at 86.7 million head on Jan. 1, 2025, down 1% year over year, with beef cows at 27.9 million head (also down). Tight cattle numbers don’t just mean “higher steaks.” They also constrain the supply of the raw materials that flow into ground beef, especially lean components.

On the ground beef side, land grant analysis lays out the mechanics clearly: lean trimmings from cull cows and bulls are a primary source for lean ground products (85s, 90s), and when cow slaughter declines, domestic lean trim production declines, while fed cattle production still generates fat trim.

What fills the gap? Imports.

USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service explicitly notes that U.S. beef imports mostly consist of lean trimmings used for processing into ground beef. Land grant commentary from Oklahoma State makes the same point: imported beef trimmings augment domestic lean supplies and allow the industry to utilize more domestic fat trim to produce ground beef.

So if federal feeding programs truly move toward “more protein at every meal,” and ground beef becomes a practical workhorse to meet that goal, you don’t just create demand for beef. You amplify demand for the lean trim side of the grind equation.

Which strongly implies: More ground beef demand plus tight domestic cattle numbers equals more imported lean trim to balance the meatblock.

The tallow subplot: seed oils down, animal fats up, and why it ties into beef

The seed oil conversation is messy, loud and often more cultural than clinical. But the consumer behavior trend underneath it is real: People are turning away from “industrial edible products” and gravitating toward “ingredients your grandparents recognize.”

The new guidelines are clearly trying to ride that wave by explicitly naming butter and beef tallow as cooking fat options (while keeping the saturated fat ceiling language).

For beef, that matters because it reframes fat from “byproduct” into “ingredient”:

tallow as a pantry staple
tallow as a premium cooking medium
tallow as a whole animal utilization story consumers actually understand

Even if the nutrition debate continues, the market signal is: whole foods and traditional ingredients are back in style.

My prediction

This is not a “steaks are back, baby” story. (They never left)

This is a “protein becomes policy” story.

If schools, military and veteran meals, and government cafeterias implement the guidance the way it’s being framed, more protein, more whole foods, less refined carbs, then the lowest friction beef solution is higher utilization of ground beef.

And because ground beef is a blending business, that demand doesn’t stop at domestic slaughter numbers. It pulls on the lever the market already uses: imported lean trimmings. We will see an even greater need for more imported trim. That increase, baring any tariff showdowns, will likely come from Brazil and Australia.

So yes, if the new pyramid actually makes it from PDF to procurement, the beef complex will feel it.

Not first in ribeyes. First in grind.

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

2025 Beef Imports See 20% Jump During First 10 Months

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:26:23 GMT

The latest release of shutdown-delayed trade data provides information on beef and cattle imports and exports through October 2025. Beef imports have been a particular focus in the industry and politically for several months.

For the first 10 months of 2025, beef imports were up 20% year over year (Figure 1). This follows a 24.4% year-over-year increase in 2024. Increased beef imports are the expected market response to declining beef production in the U.S., especially decreased production of nonfed processing beef. Through 2025, U.S. cow slaughter is projected to be down a total of 29.2% from the recent peak in 2022. Beef imports have increased to partially mitigate the resulting decreases in lean processing.

Through October, Australia was the largest source of U.S. beef imports with a 23.6% share of total imports. Brazil, at No. 2, accounted for 19.5% of beef imports, followed by Canada (18.2% share), Mexico (12.3% share), New Zealand (10.8% share) and Uruguay (6.8% share). Despite much political focus on Argentina in the fourth quarter of 2025, Argentina only represents about 25% of the “Other” category in Figure 1, representing 2.2% of total beef imports.

(Oklahoma State University)

Figures 1 and 2 show the dramatic increase in beef imports from both Australia and Brazil since 2022. Figure 2 also illustrates the dramatic difference in the seasonal pattern of beef imports from the two countries.

Beef imports from Brazil are included in the “Other Country” quota. Since 2022, Brazil has moved quickly in January of each year to fill the “Other Country” quota before being subject to over-quota tariffs. The January spikes in imports of Brazilian beef are obvious in Figure 2.

In 2025, a second peak in beef imports from Brazil occurred in May as market values stimulated additional imports despite the over-quota tariffs and additional 10% tariffs imposed in April. However, an additional 40% tariff imposed on Brazil in August did result in sharply lower imports from Brazil in September and October. By the end of November, all the additional tariffs have been removed leaving Brazil with only the over-quota tariff (26.5%) for the remainder of the year.

So far in January 2026, Brazil is moving quickly to fill the “Other Country” quota in the first two weeks of the year with zero tariff. Subsequent imports from Brazil going forward will be subject to the over-quota tariff.

Once again, data will eventually confirm a spike in total beef imports in January as a result. Despite this, the domestic price of 90% lean trimmings in the first full week of January was $401.71 per cwt, up 19.8% from the same period one year ago.

The High Cost of Breaking Up Big Beef

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:55:39 GMT

After years of hearings, headlines and hashtags about “meatpacker monopolies,” regulators finally swing the hammer: the four largest U.S. beef packers are forced to split, sell plants, or spin off divisions. At a stroke, the industry’s most visible concentration disappears from the org chart.

The narrative would be simple: we broke up the Big 4, so markets are finally free!

The economic story would be a disaster.

What the Big 4 Actually Do Today

Start with the baseline. USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that the four largest beef packers buy about 85 percent of all steers and heifers in the United States (before the Lexington plant closure). That level of concentration did not appear overnight. In 1980, the top four handled roughly a third of purchases. By the mid-1990s, that share had climbed to around 80 percent as plants became much larger and many small, high-cost facilities closed.

ERS’s review of decades of research comes to an uncomfortable but important conclusion: moving slaughter to larger, more efficient plants clearly cut per-head processing costs.

The Verdict: The Cost of Efficiency - According to James MacDonald of the USDA ERS, the math is inescapable: “The industry’s largest plants can deliver meat to buyers at costs 3 to 5 percent lower than plants only a quarter as big.” In a low-margin business, 5% is the difference between profitability and plant closures.

Consolidation gave packers some leverage, yes. But the efficiency gains were so large that cattle producers and consumers were still better off overall than under the old, fragmented structure.

If We Break Them Up: Where the Costs Go

No matter how you structure a breakup (caps on regional market share, forced divestitures, or bans on multi-plant ownership) the basic economic effects are identical:

You take existing plants and make them smaller or less integrated.
You raise total system costs.
Those costs must land somewhere.

Producers: More Fragility in Practice - At the cow-calf and feedlot levels, the political promise is simple: more packers = more bids = better prices.

That may happen for a short period. But over time, the economics bite. Smaller, de-scaled plants have higher fixed costs per head. Without a large balance sheet behind them, these plants are exposed to bad margins, droughts, and disease events.

Dr. Derrell Peel, a livestock economist at Oklahoma State University, has warned about the dangers of ignoring these market fundamentals: “Anytime politics trumps economics, the strong supply and demand fundamentals that have determined the outlook for the industry become irrelevant.”

A forced breakup trades concentration with scale for fragility without scale. Over a full cattle cycle, more plants will fail outright during long-cattle, poor-margin periods, stranding local cattle and hammering basis when it hurts most.

Labor and Plant Communities

One of the social arguments for a breakup is that it would revive smaller, “local” packing plants and rural jobs. Reality check:

Data from 2007 to 2019 show that small slaughter plants have been disappearing, while plants with 500+ employees have held steady. This is largely due to financial viability to ride out the cattle cycle storm.
Wages: Larger plants generally pay higher average wages because they can spread fixed costs and offer stable employment.

If you push the system toward smaller firms, someone has to fund the higher labor costs per pound. In most cases, that means lower cattle bids or higher boxed beef prices. It does not, and cannot, mean higher cattle prices AND lower beef prices.

Quality and Food Safety

The modern Big 4 model is built around high-volume, high-specification production. Large plants run advanced grading camera systems and data collection that allow them to support branded programs (Prime, Certified Angus, Non-Hormone Treated, etc.) from the same chain.

Fragment the packers, and that investment evaporates. Smaller, under-capitalized plants will be slower to invest in the next generation of food safety and yield prediction technology. Furthermore, it detracts from quality that the consumer is demanding. Over the past several years, we have seen increases in per capita beef consumption. Taking away from investment and R&D will result in quality that will suffer or fail to meet the demands of the consumer.

With the ever-increasing number of regulations and government oversight on food safety, the big four are able to shoulder the financial burden and create food safety programs that span multiple plants and use best practices. Fragmentation of the big 4 would result in a reduction of food safety program effectiveness and innovation.

Feeding the World or Handing the Ball to Someone Else - By 2024, exports accounted for nearly 14 percent of U.S. beef production. That value helps support the entire supply chain. But competitors like Australia are actively ramping up grain-fed capacity.

If the U.S. deliberately undermines the scale and reliability of its beef packing sector, we make it harder to offer large, consistent export programs. We aren’t “fixing” the market; we are handing market share to Brazil and Australia.

What Happens to Consumers?

The popular promise is: break up big packers and beef will get cheaper. The likely outcome is the opposite.

Higher Average Costs and More Volatility - Agricultural economist Jayson Lusk has analyzed what actually drives price spreads. His research on industry resilience found that shocking the system doesn’t help: “Increasing odds of shutdown results in a widening of the farm-to-retail price spread even as packer profits fall, regardless of the structure.”

Breaking firms apart does not fix capacity constraints. It simply makes the system more expensive to operate. Consumers will see this as higher average prices and sudden spikes in ground beef costs when smaller plants go down.

The Counter-Points

Advocates for a breakup usually rely on three core arguments. On the surface, they sound intuitive. Under the microscope of actual market data, they crumble.

Argument 1: “More Plants Equal More Resilience”

The Theory: If we have 50 small plants instead of 4 giant ones, a fire or cyberattack at one facility won’t cripple the national supply. It creates “redundancy.”

The Dismantling: This confuses operational redundancy with financial resilience. While 50 small plants offer physical options, they lack financial armor. A giant packer can absorb a year of negative margins, a massive recall cost, or a sudden export ban. A small, standalone plant cannot. In a fragmented system, a market downturn doesn’t just mean lower profits; it means a wave of bankruptcies. We trade the risk of a temporary bottleneck for the risk of permanent capacity destruction.

Argument 2: “Small Packers Will Pay Ranchers a Fairer Share”

The Theory: Strip away the “monopoly power” of the Big 4, and the competition will force new, smaller packers to bid up cattle prices, returning a larger share of the retail dollar to the rancher.

The Dismantling: This ignores the “efficiency dividend.” Small packers might want to pay more, but they simply cannot afford to. Recall the ERS data: huge plants operate at significantly lower costs per head. That efficiency creates a surplus that gets shared between packer, consumer, and producer. If you force the industry back to a high-cost structure, the “pie” shrinks. You cannot distribute perceived wealth that has been eaten by inefficiency.

Argument 3: “Regulation Will Fix the Broken Market”

The Theory: Government mandates on cash trade and plant size will level the playing field.

The Dismantling: Industry economist Nevil Speer has spent years analyzing the collision between political mandates and market realities. His conclusion is a stark warning to those inviting government into the cattle pen: “One-size-fits-all government overlays are rife with unintended consequences... Bottom line, if you’re mad at ‘the packer’, be careful what you ask for; one fix always leads to the need for another fix and so on.”

Speer further notes that the industry’s success doesn’t come from regulation, but from listening to the consumer: “The industry’s track record is proof positive: the right focus has always been, and will always be, directed towards the consumer – improving quality and consistency and growing beef demand. That’s where opportunity happens.”

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Beyond the direct costs, a breakup would likely trigger four “hidden” side effects that almost never get discussed but would hit the industry immediately.

1. The Retailer Revolt (Vertical Integration) - If the government breaks up the Big 4 to “save” independent ranchers from corporate power, they might inadvertently hand the industry to a different corporate power. Giant retailers hate volatility. If a breakup makes the packing sector fragmented and unreliable, retailers will not sit idle. We are already seeing this with Walmart’s case-ready facilities and Costco’s poultry complex. A breakup would likely accelerate this trend, replacing “Big Beef” (who buys from many feedlots) with “Big Retail” (a closed loop owned by the grocery store).

2. The “Drop Credit” Collapse - The “drop credit” (the value of hides, tallow, and variety meats) can add $150 to $200 per head to the value of a steer. The Big 4 maximize this value through massive rendering infrastructure and global export networks. Small, fragmented plants often lack the volume to justify this equipment. Instead of selling these parts for profit, they often have to pay to throw them away. This destroys value per head, directly lowering the price they can pay the rancher.

3. Environmental Regression - Breaking up plants is bad for the environment. Large plants use significantly less water and energy per pound of beef produced due to advanced reclamation systems that small plants cannot afford. A fragmented industry would likely result in a higher carbon and water footprint per burger.

4. The Capital Freeze - A forced breakup isn’t a clean surgery; it’s a messy divorce that would likely take a decade of litigation. During those years, no packer will invest in upgrading plants or fixing bottlenecks because they don’t know if they’ll own the plant next year. The industry infrastructure would rot in place while lawyers argue, leaving producers with aging, inefficient plants.

The Bottom Line

If we forcibly break up the Big 4, we do not get a storybook cattle market where hundreds of small local packers bid up cattle and sell cheap steaks to grateful consumers. We are more likely to get:

Higher costs per pound.
Less investment in safety and R&D.
Weaker export competitiveness.
A supply chain that fails loudly during the next drought.
A reversion to packer concentration when plants fail.

Concentration does not automatically mean collusion, and fragmentation does not automatically mean fair. If we genuinely care about competition and resilience, the smarter path is NOT to smash the system and hope for the best. It is to shine light on how markets work, discipline bad behavior where we can prove it, and preserve the scale we need to keep beef on the global menu.

Caveat on Small Plants

Smaller, regional plants have been popping up across the country. These plants are important to the overall system, but do not serve the industry in the same way as the big 4. Smaller plants can serve niche markets, geographical locations, or consumer preferences that large packing plants can’t efficiently service. However, they simply cannot provide the scale to feed the growing population that efficient, commodity focused plants can. To survive, their strategies must rely heavily on product and claims differentiation, e-commerce, and “local” attributes that drive increased value over traditional commodity products.

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

Your Next Read: Ghosts of Packing Past and Present

Brazil Surpassing U.S. As Top Beef Producer, Easing Global Supply Squeeze

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:53:01 GMT

Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top beef producer last year, according to market estimates, after the South American country beat output forecasts by hundreds of thousands of tons, easing a global supply squeeze and helping limit a surge in meat prices.

Brazil was already the biggest beef exporter, shipping meat worth almost $17 billion in 2025, according to government trade data released on Tuesday. Beef production numbers are not due until February, but analysts have recently raised their estimates. Farmers have been sending more animals to slaughter, cashing in on high export demand from countries including China and the U.S., where low supply has pushed beef prices to record levels.

Elevated slaughter typically leads to a period of low output as producers hold back animals to breed and rebuild herds. But productivity gains in Brazil may limit or even prevent a downturn, people in the industry say. They noted that farms have been inseminating cattle quicker, fattening them faster and slaughtering them younger.

“Ten years ago, the average age of cattle slaughtered in Brazil was five years,” said Vinicius Barbosa, a commercial manager responsible for tens of thousands of cattle at the CMA feedlot in Barretos, about 260 miles (420 km) north of Sao Paulo. “Now it is 36 months and going rapidly to 24,” he said.

Mauricio Nogueira, head of livestock consultancy Athenagro, said Brazilian beef production far surpassed his forecast in 2025. Output grew 4% for the year, where he had predicted a 2.7% drop. The increase of around 800,000 tons was about equal to total annual exports of Argentina, the world’s No. 5 beef shipper.

Rabobank, which had expected Brazil’s beef production to decline in 2025, now sees 0.5% growth to 12.5 million tons carcass weight equivalent. The U.S. Department of Agriculture in December raised its estimate for Brazilian beef output by 450,000 tons to 12.35 million tons.

If the official numbers confirm market estimates, 2025 will be the first year that Brazil’s output will have surpassed U.S. production, which fell 3.9% to 11.8 million tons in 2025, according to USDA estimates, following years of drought.

Feedlots, Rising Carcass Weight Drive Output

U.S. beef production will fall a further 0.9% to 11.7 million tons in 2026, the USDA said. In Brazil, the USDA and Rabobank project a decline in output, but Nogueira said rising productivity could actually boost Brazil’s production by around 300,000 tons.

Almost 28% of cattle slaughtered in Brazil will be fattened in feedlots by 2027, up from 22% in 2025, according to consultants Scot Consultoria.

“Feedlots do in 100 days for cattle what pasture does in between 18 and 24 months,” said Barbosa, adding that CMA’s Barretos feedlot would process 80,000 cattle in 2026, up from 65,000 last year.

A drone image shows cattle entering a feedlot at CMA Farm in Barretos, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

(Joel Silva/Reuters)

Brazil’s booming corn ethanol industry is generating a byproduct known as dried distillers grains that has higher protein than corn and helps cattle fatten faster, analysts said.

Cows are becoming pregnant more often as farmers adopt more efficient insemination techniques, allowing producers to slaughter more animals without reducing herd size.

Scot Consultoria expects Brazil’s pregnancy rate - the proportion of females that become pregnant during a breeding season - to rise to 54% in 2027 from an expected 50% in 2026.

Better genetics are also improving cattle growth and boosting meat quality, analysts say. And Brazil still has not matched the 90% proportion of cattle passing through feedlots as in the U.S., or Australia’s 40%.

If Brazil’s pregnancy rate rose to 66%, equivalent to neighbouring Argentina, the number of calves birthed each year would rise from an estimated 32 million to 40 million, according to consultants Datagro. The pregnancy rate in Canada is 96%, they said.

Government data show Brazil has 238 million cattle, well over double the 94 million in the U.S. Higher productivity would allow output to expand without increasing cattle numbers or the area of pasture land. That could ease one economic driver of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil’s cattle herd is expected to grow just 4% between 2024 and 2034 while beef production increases 24%, according to Brazilian beef exporter group ABIEC. U.S. beef production will rise 3.5% and cattle numbers will grow 5% over that period, by USDA estimates.

Brazil Key As Top Producers Scale Down

Global beef prices will hinge on whether Brazil can avoid a production downturn this year.

The USDA expects output in the world’s six biggest producers to fall in 2026 by a combined 2.4% - the biggest annual drop in decades - after rising 0.4% in 2025. These producers are Brazil, the U.S., China, the European Union, Argentina and Australia. The list excludes India, which the USDA names as one of the six top beef producers even though that country produces buffalo meat rather than beef.

The USDA expects Brazilian production to fall 5.3% to 11.7 million tons carcass weight equivalent this year. If Nogueira’s estimates are confirmed and output rises instead to around 12.6 million tons, the decline in the top six producers would be just 0.2%.

“There has never been so much international demand for Brazilian beef,” said Guilherme Jank, a Datagro analyst, adding that local beef packers have also ramped up capacity.

“We are witnessing firsthand a significant shift in how the beef cattle supply system works in Brazil, in terms of quality, scale, efficiency, and productivity,” he said.

(Reporting by Ana Mano in Barretos and Peter Hobson in Canberra; Additional reporting by Ella Cao in Beijing and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)

What Keeps Beef Producers Up at Night?

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:08:01 GMT

Worry — it is an anxious way of thinking. It usually involves thoughts about what bad things might happen in the future and if you can cope with them.

In the beef industry, the list of things producers and stakeholders worry or stress about can be long and exhaustive.

Here’s a list of some of those key stressors keeping producers up at night:

1. Fear of Animal Diseases

Troy Rowan, University of Tennessee assistant professor, summarizes: “As with most folks, I’m concerned about emerging animal diseases like New World screwworm (NWS) and foot-and-mouth disease, and the cascading impacts they could have on the industry.”

Texas beef producer Donnell Brown agrees a top concern on his mind is NWS.

“As temperatures rise this spring and fly season begins again, I am deeply concerned that we could see an outbreak with devastating consequences for livestock and wildlife,” Brown says. “We still lack practical ways to treat or protect wildlife. After the screwworms were eradicated in the 1970s, it was 15 years before I remember seeing deer on our ranch. Today, deer are abundant and hunting has become a major economic driver for ranchers and rural communities. If screwworms cause significant wildlife losses, the ripple effects would be severe.”

Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), says the top five thing that keep him up at night are: “Foot-and-mouth disease, foot-and-mouth disease, foot-and-mouth disease, foot-and-mouth disease and foot-and-mouth disease.”

He explains: “We have a lot of good things that are going on, and yes, we spend a lot of time talking about New World screwworm, but we have the tools able to address New World screwworm. Foot-and-mouth disease is still kind of that unknown, and we understand that in working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they know they have proof that terror groups around the country have access to the foot-and-mouth disease virus, and that a pin full is all they need to be able to come in and absolutely send our market into chaos — our industry into chaos, our food supply into chaos and the economics around all of those into chaos.”

He says that fact is why NCBA spends so much time working with USDA, state associations like KLA and state animal health officials to make sure the industry is prepared in the event we have reintroduction of foot-and-mouth disease.

“We haven’t had it since 1929 but it’s going to come again, and NCBA is spending it just about every waiting moment we can to make sure we’re prepared,” Woodall says.

Ron Lemenager, Purdue University beef specialist, adds, “I worry about when, not if, a disease like foot-and-mouth will be introduced that will cripple our markets and supply chain.”

Lemenager agrees NWS is a concern, but in his part of the country a bigger concern is the Asian Longhorned Tick and Theileria.

Check out these related articles:
Foot And Mouth Disease: Producers Should Be Prepared
The Smell You’ll Never Forget: A Calf Infested with New World Screwworm
Protect Your Livestock: Signs of New World Screwworm
5 Livestock Diseases That Could Impact U.S. Food Security and Economic Stability
Theileria and the Asian Longhorned Tick: What Beef Producers Need to Know

2. Weather Challenges

Kansas beef producer Debbie Lyons-Blythe says there are a number of challenges that worry her family.

“No. 1 is Mother Nature,” she says. “Everything we do day-to-day and long-term is tied to weather. Even the markets are tied to what Mother Nature is doing across the nation.”

Cyndi Van Newkirk of Van Newkirk Herefords agrees weather is a big stressor for her family who are seedstock producers in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Lemenager says with multiple years of short rainfall in a number of different areas he is concerned with drought and that impact on corn, bean and hay prices as well as hay availability.

“The variability in the weather and the marketplace are always concerns to worry about,” he adds.

Cattle producer and extension educator Shad Marston from Canton, Kan., says the possibility of extreme severe weather is what keeps him up at night.

“Two years ago in January, we had a really cold week, right at our beginning of the calving season. We only had three calves on the ground,” he remembers. “The temperatures were well below our normal cold temperatures, and the snow created it hard to even get out of the house. We never lost any cattle or calves, but that week was a challenge. Everything on our ranch froze up — waters, tractor and skid steer. We only had one truck running and it just had a flatbed on it with no bale bed.”

Marston says they had to haul small square bales to the cows from the barn for two days until a neighbor came and loaded round bales on the flatbed to take to the cows.

“We parked on top of the hill and let the bales roll off and down the small hill for the cows to eat and bed down on. A couple of times, we had to tie the bales to a tree to get them off the flat bed. We could not risk getting the truck stuck, because that’s all we had to feed them with, and very few neighbors were able to help if anyone had problems,” he describes. “I remember lying in bed at night wondering if we were going to make it the next day. We could of easily lost some of the cattle. So being prepared is my worst fear and I’ve tried to always have a plan for the worst. Extra feed on hand, fuel additive in equipment and enough supplies on hand to make it if we can’t get to town for a week are lessons we have learned the hard way.”

Check out these related articles:
Ranching Parched Land: Strategies for Drought Resilience
Avoiding The Calfcicle: Calving in Winter Weather
Ranchers Make Tough Decisions to Weather Intense Southwest Drought
Weather Swings Bring Mud and Concerns About Calf Health
Normal La Niña Pattern to Return By Thanksgiving

3. The Cattle Market

For South Dakota cattle producer Ken Odde, he says what keeps him up at night is anything that might “crash the market.”

“I am thinking about both fed cattle and feeder cattle markets,” Odde explains. “Foot-and-mouth disease is high on the list for me, and it doesn’t seem to get much attention recently.”

Van Newkirk agrees the markets and overthinking market swings are a concern.

Check out these related articles:
What Does the Bullish Cattle on Feed Report Mean for the Beef Industry in 2026?
Uncertainty: The Word of 2025 for the Cattle Market
$4 Feeder Cattle: Dream or Reality?
Cattle Market Roller Coaster Continues: Mexican Ag Minister Announces U.S. Visit to Discuss Border Opening
Navigate Market Volatility with Risk Management Strategies

4. Beef Supply and Consumer Demand

“We had the smallest calf crop since 1941,” says Ron Lemenager, Purdue University beef specialist. “Put that with the closure of the Mexico border due to New World screwworm and we have a limited supply. As a producer I like the higher prices, but from a consumer standpoint, at what point are they going to walk away from beef and go to chicken or some other protein source.”

Brown explains supply and demand ultimately govern this market.

“If we lose feedyards and packing capacity, we weaken the demand side of the equation,” he says. “Over time, that reduced demand would place downward pressure on feeder cattle prices, undermining the very producers who are benefiting from today’s high prices.”

Jason Warner, Kansas State University cow-calf extension specialist, says: “In the short term, I am concerned about what could happen to the beef industry if there is a major drop in consumer demand for beef, and the potential ramifications to the cow-calf producer if calf prices substantially drop considering how high cow/heifer prices are right now. I think knowing cow production costs will be important going forward.”

Woodall summarizes consumer sentiment remains the bedrock of the industry’s success.

“As long as the consumer is with us, as long as they are choosing to buy beef, then we have a bright future,” he says.

Woodall credits generations of producers for bolstering herd quality and producing a product people want, not just need, to buy.

Check out these related articles:
Consumer Craze for Protein Drives Beef Demand
Beef Industry Chaos: Tight Supplies, Strong Consumer Demand and Political Interference
What Does Talk of $10 Ground Beef Mean to Producers?
How Many Minutes Does a Consumer Have to Work to Buy A Pound of Ground Beef?

5. Government Interference

Lyons-Blythe says another concern is government interference in market disruptions and environmental regulations.

Woodall adds we need to keep the government out of the cattle market.

“We want to be able to grow this industry,” Woodall says. “As producers, one of the best things you can do is call your member of Congress, call your two senators, and tell them to be advocates for us. We don’t need new programs. We don’t need a return of things like mandatory country of origin labeling. We simply need the government to stay out of the marketplace.”

Check out these related articles:
Did the Administration’s Plan to Lower Beef Prices Wreck the Bull Run in the Cattle Market?
Beef Producers React to USDA’s Plan to Fortify Industry and Trump’s Social Media Comments
USDA Has No Plans for Financial Incentives to Rebuild Cattle Herd

Other Industry Challenges

“One other thing that concerns me is the closing of some of our packing plants,” Lemenager says. “While I understand they need a steady supply of cattle to cover their overhead costs, but will they ramp back up when cattle numbers return?”

Lyons-Blythe says a local concern is the invasion of the cedar tree into the Flint Hills.

“I think in the last 30 years, we have seen such a tremendous encroachment and a lot of the prairie lost due to the cedar tree,” she explains.

Rowan, a beef cattle geneticist adds: “From a genetics perspective, I’m constantly thinking about how we will deal with the antagonisms between growth and carcass weight and grazing cow efficiency.”

Van Newkirk explains family dynamics is another challenge multi-generational beef producers face.

Check out these related articles:
Shrinking Slaughter Capacity: What’s Next in 2026?
Prescribed Burns: Keeping the Prairie Alive; Preventing Wildfires
CattleFax Predicts Profitability Despite Increased Uncertainty
Impacts of Heavier Carcass Weights
Back to the Basics: Terminal Crossbreeding Bridges Cow-Calf Efficiency and Carcass Value
5 Steps to Successful Transition Planning
How to Find Peace During Generational Transitions

Lyons-Blythe says when asking her sons what keeps them up at night their response is the upcoming calving season.

“It not only keeps them up, but it gets them up as they check heifers all night and day,” she says.

Don’t worry, we’ll tackle that challenge next week with our calving preparation blitz week on Drovers.com.

Total Meat Supplies End Year on High Note

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:05:30 GMT

Total meat production surged in December, with production of all major meat species higher than the year before. It was a sharp contrast to the rest of the year, in which less beef and pork were produced than in 2024, reports David Anderson, Texas A&M Extension economist in a recent Southern Ag Today e-newsletter .

Red meat production, led by beef and pork, normally increases seasonally, from summer to fall.

(USDA-AMS & USDA-NASS, Livestock Marketing Information Center )

This year was no exception as both increased seasonally over that period. Beef and pork production in December were 0.5% and 3.9% larger than in December 2024, respectively. Larger December beef production may surprise some, given the talk all year of tighter beef supplies, but steer dressed weights surged to new record highs, over 980 lb. per head, leading to larger beef production. Heavier barrow and gilt dressed weights than a year ago helped boost pork production, as well.

For the year, red meat production was 1.9% less, about 1 billion lb., than in 2024. Beef production was down about 3.3%, and pork production was almost 0.5% smaller. About 1% more lamb was produced in 2025.

For the third consecutive year, more pork than beef was produced.

Poultry Production

(USDA-AMS & USDA-NASS, Livestock Marketing Information Center )

While red meat production declined, young chickens (broilers) expanded its share of total meat production. Broiler and turkey production increased 4.0% and 8.4%, respectively, in December compared to last December. Less expensive feed and higher wholesale broiler meat prices earlier in the year contributed profits to fuel increased production.

The late increase in turkey production might be considered “too little, too late” for the whole bird market since it was after Thanksgiving, and it followed on the heels of increasing production in the second half of the year.

For the year, 3.5% (1.9 billion lb.) more broiler meat was produced than in 2024. Turkey production was down about 122 million lb. On balance, increasing poultry production offset declining red meat production, leading to an increase in total meat production of about 800 million lb.

(USDA-AMS & USDA-NASS, Livestock Marketing Information Center )

The new year should bring more poultry production from both broilers and turkeys. Beef production will continue to decline, and pork may see a little increase in production.

I was asked recently if we are “running out of meat” during a discussion of declining beef production and high prices. The quick and correct answer is “no!” But, production market shares are changing.

A note on data: this article uses weekly meat and poultry production. In much of our agricultural data, weeks don’t equal months. The first day of a month may fall mid-week and end mid-week so that data for a week’s production will include some in one month and some in another. But, the monthly data released by USDA won’t dramatically affect the discussion above.

Shrinking Slaughter Capacity: What's Next in 2026?

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 16:36:47 GMT

The long-feared rightsizing of shackle spaces to more closely match the number of cattle has begun.

“The market’s reaction to the November announcement was a good reminder that market volatility still exists even when the supply and demand fundamentals continue to be positive forces into the start of 2026,” says Dave Weaber, Terrain senior animal protein analyst, in his Q1 2026 Outlook .

In late November, Tyson Foods announced its plan to end operations at its Lexington, Neb., beef facility and convert its Amarillo, Texas, beef facility to a single, full-capacity shift.

“Terrain estimates the changes will eventually reduce U.S. slaughter capacity by about 6.6%,” Weaber explains. “However, slaughter plant capacity utilization is still nearly 6% behind historical norms, as the number of cattle is still well short of filling available slaughter capacity.”

Weaber predicts this positive shift in operational efficiency will likely encourage plants to fill available capacity and better compete for the available cattle.

“I expect utilization to decline by about 2% during 2026 when two new plants in Nebraska and Missouri complete their startups,” he adds.

A proposed plant in the Panhandle of Texas that would handle 6,000 head per day has the potential to lower utilization rates back to early-2025 levels if completed.

“Even without additional future slaughter capacity, utilization rates will remain low; fed cattle numbers are expected to decline during the next two to three years because of cow-calf producers’ beef cow herd expansion efforts,” Weaber summarizes.

The reduction in current fed slaughter capacity will help the remaining plants run more volume, improving efficiency by spreading fixed and semi-variable costs across more head and pounds of beef. This positive shift in operational efficiency will likely encourage plants to fill available capacity and better compete for the available cattle.

“I expect that in the near and intermediate term, this effect will at least partially offset the shift in market leverage, which currently favors the packer,” Weaber says.

Markets and Beef Prices Remain Resilient

Beyond the near-term impacts to futures traders’ sentiment, the market impacts of the announced closures are fading.

“Calf, feeder cattle and fed cattle cash markets are already recovering and have posted significant rallies,” Weaber says. “Fed cattle supplies for the first half of 2026 are not going to change. The number of cattle placed into feed yards is the number placed and will be the number that gets slaughtered. The location the cattle get processed into beef may change, but overall beef production is mostly set.”

(USDA NASS, Terrain)

He adds: “ Consumer beef demand and spending remain strong and supportive of cattle prices. Presidential and executive branch rhetoric about lowering beef prices has had little to no impact on retail and wholesale beef prices. Tariff reductions on imported lean trimmings from South America are driving volumes, but prices for contracted loads delivering in the first quarter of 2026 are record high, up 20% from a year earlier.”

“I expect the choice cutout to average between $375 per cwt and $385 per cwt and fed cattle prices to average between $234 per cwt and $238 per cwt in Q1.”

— Dave Weaber

Q1 2026 Price Outlook

“I expect available fed cattle supplies during the first quarter of 2026 to be 6% to 7% smaller than the year prior,” Weaber says. “Even with a 2% shift in leverage (fed cattle price to comprehensive cutout) to the packers’ favor, I expect the Choice cutout to average between $375 per cwt and $385 per cwt and fed cattle prices to average between $234 per cwt and $238 per cwt in Q1.”

By early December, light feeder cattle and calf auction prices have recovered much of the losses incurred since late October and appear poised to start 2026 at record levels.

“Changes to the U.S.-Mexico border status remain the greatest known risk for cattle prices,” Weaber stresses.

Further rallies in deferred live cattle futures will drive the balance of the recovery in prices for heavy feeder cattle that make up the CME feeder cattle price index. He explains demand for light cattle to be turned out on wheat pasture and California coastal range has been a key driver for the rally in light cattle.

Biggest Risk Is South of the Border

Changes to the U.S.-Mexico border status remain the greatest known risk for cattle prices.

“The Mexican government has implemented broad cattle movement and import restrictions within the country as well as greater fly control measures in partnership with the USDA,” Weaber says. “Meanwhile, U.S. and Mexican officials have begun inspections of only one border crossing into New Mexico. Additional cases of New World screwworm have been found in Mexico, which I expect to further delay the reopening.”

Active risk management to preserve operation equity should remain a priority.

“If the border were to reopen, cash feeder cattle and calf prices and feeder cattle and live cattle futures would be the first to move down,” Weaber explains. “The magnitude of the impact will depend on the rate-limiting and cost impacts of the protocols that are implemented and the number of backlogged cattle south of the border.”

One Lesson From Plant Closures

“If we’ve learned anything from the market reactions to the plant announcements, it’s that price volatility should be a focus for producers in all segments of the cattle industry,” Weaber says. “Active risk management to preserve operation equity should remain a priority.”

Your Next Reads:
Navigate Market Volatility with Risk Management Strategies

Beef’s Future: Consumer Demand, Risk Management and the Path to Continued Profitability

Buffalo Bills Beefing Up: QB Josh Allen's Hearty Gift to His Protectors

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:55:29 GMT

This Christmas, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen delivered a gift that’s sure to keep his offensive line well fueled: a generous supply of protein-packed beef.

While social media feeds overflow with holiday gift boasts, Allen’s substantial and thoughtful present for his protectors stands out.

Josh Allen and Hailee Steinfeld Gifted His Offensive Lineman a 'Quarter of a Cow' for the Holidays https://t.co/gF56mJ2Xyg
— People (@people) December 22, 2025

According to People magazine , Allen and his wife, Hailee Steinfeld, gifted his O-line a quarter of beef. Considering the Bills’ “everybody eats” mantra on offense, it seems like the perfect present as the team prepares for the playoffs.

@alyshamonet_ Alec’s Oline gift this year from our qb1!! Always so thoughtful & we couldn’t be more grateful! 🫶🏽#nfl #holidays #lovelanguage #healthandwellness #bills ♬ original sound - Alysha Monet S. Anderson

Alysha Monet, wife of Bills offensive tackle Alec Anderson, shared a TikTok video discussing the gift, captioned: “Alec’s Oline gift this year from our QB1!! Always so thoughtful & we couldn’t be more grateful!”

In the video, Monet picks up each item in the bag to show her followers the different cuts of meat Allen gifted them.

Showing four shopping bags, Anderson helps her narrate. “I feel like this is something we’ve always wanted to get for ourselves,” she says. “We actually had to go and buy a deep freezer from the store right now just to put all this meat in, but we’re so grateful to Hailee and Josh. They are the sweetest people ever and this is such a good, functional gift.”

Quarterbacks giving gifts to the players who protect them most is nothing new. In addition to the quarter of beef, Allen and Steinfeld gave each lineman a Schwank Infrared Grill.

Reports reveal Allen and other quarterbacks spare no expense for their linemen this time of year. Previous presents from Allen in the past include custom Bills scooters, Callaway golf clubs, along with private golf lessons and a Traeger smoker grill.

JBS Announces Plan to Close California Plant

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 17:55:47 GMT

Swift Beef Co., a JBS subsidiary, plans to permanently close its case-ready production plant on Feb. 2, 2026, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice to the California Employment Development Department.

Located in Riverside, Calif., the closure will affect 374 employees.

“JBS USA has announced the planned closure of its case-ready production facility in Riverside, Calif., as part of a strategic initiative to optimize its value-added and case-ready business and simplify operations across its network,” says Nikki Richardson, a spokesperson for JBS, to Meat+Poultry . “Production for current customers will be transitioned to other JBS facilities, ensuring continuity of supply and service. The transition is underway and expected to conclude by early next year.”

The facility, located outside Los Angeles, processes beef for sale in grocers’ meat cases but does not slaughter cattle.

“As cattle numbers remain tight over the next two years, the packing industry is hampered by over-capacity,” says John Nalivika, Sterling Marketing Inc. president. “In response to negative margins that are partly a result of that over-capacity, plants will be closed as the industry begins to consolidate capacity and increase production efficiency. This will be a critical step in addressing negative margins, particularly as new plants are brought online with the latest technologies.”

Brad Kooima with Kooima Kooima Varilek says the closing should not have a big impact on the cattle market because it is a small cut and wrap plant and doesn’t do any slaughtering or initial processing.

Read More and Listen to Kooima’s comments
Cattle Hold Uptrend After Correcting with CA Plant Closure a Non-Event: Soybeans Fall Further

According to Reuters , “The company remains focused on delivering high-quality products and dependable service while strengthening its operational footprint to meet evolving market demands.”

JBS will shift production for its customers to other facilities, and workers will be eligible for jobs at other plants.

Last month, JBS projected its U.S. beef margins would likely tighten in the fourth quarter from the prior period due to the U.S. cattle shortage.

Your Next Read:
What Does Tyson’s Announcement Mean to Beef Producers?

CAB Insider: Market Update Dec. 10

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 03:40:28 GMT

The fed cattle trade has undergone a tumultuous ride in the past two months. Weekly fed steer prices averaged $237/cwt. the second week in October, then rapidly declined $28/cwt. by the third week in November.

Last week’s trade featured a sizeable recovery with the five-area steer average up $10/cwt., landing at $221/cwt. with prices as high as $226/cwt. in Kansas. Cash trade was limited to fewer than three packers in Texas, triggering confidentiality rules by USDA regulations. This rule is typically only triggered in the Colorado region where it’s the norm for trade to be reported for just two packers.

The total harvested head count was dramatically higher last week as the 600,000 head eclipsed the prior week’s holiday schedule by 102,000 head. Before last week’s strong upward move in the spot cash cattle price, packer margins were calculated somewhere north of $50/head.

This helped to incentivize packers to ramp up harvest levels, coupled with the increased volume needed to fulfill pre-holiday grocery store beef obligations. The cattle price recovery quickly wiped out much of the packer margin, setting that closer to breakeven as this week got underway.

(Certified Angus Beef)

Carcass cutout values began December with a cheapening trend in continuation of the downward pattern established at the beginning of November. Many observers are decrying weakening beef demand due to the lower price trend. However, softer cutout values were recorded for the month of November in four out of five of the last four years, with the exception of 2024. December price trends are mixed in the last five years with 2022 and 2024 charting higher prices and the remaining three years trending lower.

Cutout price spreads are mixed with the CAB premium above Choice at a very reasonable $16.81/cwt., down $3/cwt. last week. The Choice/Select spread remains relatively wide at $20.06/cwt. in Urner Barry’s data last week. This level is much lower than a year ago, as the Select grade share of fed cattle has slipped to just 10.9% of the carcass supply. Customers for Select grade product are finding their orders shorted while distributors have told them to get on board with “at least” USDA Choice moving forward.

Big Shifts in Quality Grades

The 2025 quality grade trend tracked the USDA Prime grade a full percentage point higher than the prior year through August, averaging 11.5%. Since then, the Prime grade trend has defied seasonal expectations, normally setting a course toward a fall low in both Choice and Prime grade percentages. Instead, the Prime share steadily increased in a punctuated departure to the upside, averaging 12.1% since August.

While the unseasonal swing to the upside is impressive, the past four weeks of data add more emphasis to the chart. In November, Nebraska packers harvested three weeks of cattle above 14% Prime with the final week spiking to 17.2%. This stands to reason as the northern feeding region is currently carrying the most market-ready supply of cattle with the heaviest carcass weights, indicating that days on feed are pushing grade upward. Record-heavy industry carcass weights are a nationwide trend, but led by northern cattle.

On the other hand, Texas feedyards currently have the least occupancy with their cattle inventory hindered by the absence of Mexican cattle. Even so, the Texas grade trend is also charting much richer this season. While the state’s Prime grade is exceptional compared to history, averaging 7.8% since June, the uptrend in USDA Choice is notable. The Texas Choice grade average moved little on either side of 64% through October this year. Yet the last four weeks saw Choice carcasses jump to average almost 69% of the total, while the Prime share gave no ground, averaging 8.1% in the past month.

(Certified Angus Beef)

A combination of factors in Texas creates ample cause for the richer grade trend. First, the average Mexican feeder cattle supply has lower genetic potential for marbling. Absence of these cattle in the current Texas carcass mix easily pushes quality grade higher in the state. As well, the increase in beef x dairy cattle over the past several years has brought the grade higher with refined terminal genetics introduced through this substantial Texas cattle supply. Finally, it’s understood that some northern cattle are shipping to Texas to be harvested as the northern feedlot sector is heavy on market-ready head counts.

A larger share of Upper 2/3’s Choice and Prime carcasses in the Angus-type cattle supply is also helping to hold the CAB carcass certification rate a percentage point higher than a year ago, averaging 36% for the past six weeks. Record-heavy carcass weights featuring average steer carcasses at 988 lb. are keeping a lid on brand acceptance rates. While richer average marbling across the weekly fed harvest suggests we should see even higher brand acceptance rates, there has been an increase in carcasses disqualified because they exceed the brand’s maximum 1,100 lb. carcass weight.

Where's The Beef? U.S. Beef Left Out of China Trade Framework

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:11:49 GMT

Most of the hype surrounding the U.S. China framework has been about China buying soybeans and even other U.S. ag products like sorghum. But one commodity was left out of the talks: beef. So, how did that even happen?

Until 2025, China was a bright spot for the U.S. beef export market with rising sales. However, that stopped this year and has drug down total beef exports year to date. According to Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) president and CEO, U.S. beef exports are down about 10% on volume and 8% on value through August.

He says it’s not just a result of tariffs. The biggest issue is the lack of access for U.S. beef plants in China. He reports 400-plus beef establishments were not relisted back in April.

“It’s not demand-related. Demand is booming, especially the high-end, you know, Sams Club, places that are ready to reintroduce U.S. beef when we get the plants relisted,” Halstrom explains.

According to the Meat Institute, in 2024, China was the U.S.’s third largest market, by value, for beef, at more than $1.5 billion.

“The strong beef exports to China were thanks to President Trump’s leadership in securing the U.S.-China Phase One Agreement during his first term,” the Meat Institute reported in a nine-page document — The Reality of Beef and Cattle Markets. “However, since the beginning of 2025 — and in contravention of the terms of the Phase One Agreement — China has failed to renew the registrations for more than 415 U.S. beef establishments, making them ineligible to export to China. This is a massive market loss for the U.S. that Brazil and other countries have been eager to fill.”

Ethan Lane, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) senior vice president of government affairs, says NCBA is frustrated beef was not part of the China framework and unsure why it was left out of the discussions.

“We don’t have a good answer to that,” he says. “You know, we were told that was top of the list and that negotiators knew how important that was. What we heard back was that they got some stuff done on soybeans and some other things and that this is a commitment to renegotiate this deal every year moving forward.”

Halstrom says he hopes relisting U.S. beef plants is part of future negotiations.

“We’ve had quite a few plants also delisted for non-tariff trade violations, residues around MGA in particular,” he explains. “So, you’ve got quite a few plants that have actually been delisted twice. There’s some paperwork to be worked through there. But if the Chinese side wanted to get these plants relisted, it’s relatively easy to do. It’s just they have to be instructed to do it.”

Still, Lane says they’ve asked the administration to make it a priority because it’s a problem for producers, packers and the supply chain.

“That’s what we need here is for that negotiation to result in us resuming our access to that market. That was like 13% to 14% of our market and is definitely something producers feel on that carcass,” Lane explains.

So, they’ll keep pushing because China is a key growth area for U.S. beef.

Your Next Reads:
Setting the Record Straight: What China Actually Agreed to Buy—And When Those Ag Purchases Will Happen

Sharp Drop in Beef and Pork Exports to China Causes April Meat Exports to Take a Hit

Do Foreign Powers Control Beef Prices?

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 19:28:17 GMT

This is the next in the series explaining the accusations against the beef packers.

Opening Statements

Charge (Media/Prosecution): Foreign-controlled packers, principally JBS (Brazil), National Beef/Marfrig (Brazil), control the U.S. beef market. Their ability to own U.S. plants and import product from affiliated foreign operations allows them to shape domestic prices and supply to the detriment of U.S. producers and consumers.

Defense (Packers): Foreign ownership is material but not controlling on the total FI market (fed + non-fed). Ownership ≠ price-setting power. Observed prices, spreads, and margins follow fundamentals (herd cycles, capacity utilization, logistics, and retail stickiness), not nationality. Affiliated imports mostly fill lean-trim gaps and are constrained by U.S. regulation and buyer standards.

Ground Rules

Relevant market.

Media: Fed-cattle (steers/heifers) slaughter = the price-setting core for boxed beef.
Packers: Total FI beef (fed + non-fed), measured where procurement is actually contested; regional draw areas (~150–250 miles), not a single national auction.

Burden of proof. Durable market power must be shown in outcomes (prices, margins, spreads) beyond what fundamentals justify. “Foreign ownership” alone is not dispositive.

Facts Not in Dispute (scope and shares)

Fed segment is concentrated; the “Big 4” dominate fed throughput.
On total FI (fed + non-fed), concentration falls meaningfully vs. fed-only snapshots.
Directionally, recent plant-level rollups place JBS as the largest single foreign owner on total FI, National Beef (Marfrig) comes in second.
In many recent years, JBS + National together land in the low–to–mid-30% of total FI production (varies with actual utilization).
Exact annual percentages require a plant-by-plant capacity and realized-throughput table (fed vs. non-fed) for the year in question.

The Media’s Case (Defendant)

Count 1 — Structure & foreign control

Two of the dominant fed packers are foreign-controlled (JBS, National/Marfrig). Combined, foreign parents anchor a large footprint in the price-setting fed segment.

(The Big Bad Packer)

They went from owning 0% of production in 2006 to 34% in 2025

Count 2 — Affiliated imports as a lever

Foreign parents can toggle import flows (e.g., Brazil 0201/0202 muscle cuts; 90CL lean trim) while operating U.S. plants, giving them portfolio options to stabilize boxes and potentially dampen cattle bids in tight windows.

Count 3 — Thin spot + AMA dependence

Negotiated cash is thin in several regions; AMAs/formulas benchmark off LMR spot. In a high-CR4 environment, small scheduling/basis moves by large foreign-controlled firms could nudge a thin benchmark that prices a much larger formula volume.

Count 4 — Shock episodes

Holcomb and COVID produced spread blowouts when capacity buckled. With few owners of chain speed, bottlenecks translate to wider spreads and weaker bids—the pattern, says the Media, of power in action.

Media’s ask: Conclude that foreign-controlled owners possess market-shaping power in fed cattle, reinforced by affiliated imports and thin cash discovery.

The Packers’ Case (Plaintiff)

Count 1 — Market definition & actual shares

“Control of U.S. beef” must be judged on total FI. On that basis, foreign-controlled share is sub-majority and variable; regional draw areas show multiple active buyers with rivalry fluctuating on logistics/outages.
Looking at fed beef slaughter alone, foreign ownership is still well below a majority share (~34%).

(Big Bad Packer)

Other industries (cellular service, Beer) share similar foreign ownership percentages with little to know concern over foreign dominance.

Count 2 — Imports are a composition valve, not a control lever

Most imports into the U.S. complex are lean trimmings (90CL) that balance grinds when non-fed supply is short; supporting retail ground beef, not suppressing fed bids nationwide.

(The Big Bad Packer)

Imports have increased in recent years, as domestic production has curtailed; helping to cure the imbalance of low trim availability for ground beef.
Imported muscle cuts face tariffs/quotas/inspection and retailer specs; they compete rather than dictate.

Count 3 — Outcomes track fundamentals, not nationality

Live ↔ wholesale co-move; spreads widen when utilization falls and compress as chain speed normalizes.
Retail is the enduring spread (category management, labor, packaging, shrink).
Margins cycle and loss periods; incompatible with the idea that foreign owners can set prices at will.
Our bid-dispersion work shows breathing competition, not the near-zero compression you’d expect under coordination.

Count 4 — Owning U.S. plants and importing can be pro-supply

Dual roles increase supply reliability (backfilling shocks, balancing trim needs). All imports must clear FSIS/CBP/LMR and commercial buyer programs; related-party transactions are scrutinized in audits and filings.

Packers’ ask: Foreign ownership ≠ control. Measured on total FI and regional rivalry, the data (dispersion, utilization-linked margins, retail lag) contradict the control thesis.

Character and Governance (Neutral Sidebar)

JBS/J&F bribery history (Brazil) & U.S. context.

Public record shows bribery-related admissions/settlements with Brazilian authorities and FCPA-related resolutions; these events overlap periods of international expansion, including U.S. acquisitions.
JBS has stated it implemented compliance enhancements (ethics programs, third-party controls, internal monitoring).

Why it matters (media’s angle):

Governance failures heighten concerns that global cash flows and portfolio positioning (imports + U.S. plants) could be opportunistically timed to influence markets, warranting enhanced transparency.

Why it isn’t dispositive (packers’ angle):

Misconduct abroad does not prove U.S. price control. U.S. operations face FSIS, CBP, LMR, DOJ/FTC, SEC oversight and retailer audits. If control were exercised, we’d observe persistent supranormal margins and abnormally tight bid dispersion outside shock windows. BOTTOM LINE: we don’t.

Jury Instructions (Deciding Tests)

Shares: Are JBS + National a majority on total FI production? (If no, control of U.S. beef is hard to sustain.)
Dispersion: Do regional bids show abnormal compression beyond freight/quality/utilization?
Utilization model: Do margins/spreads normalize as capacity returns?
Import-timing test: Do affiliated imports systematically depress bids after controlling for composition and retail lag?
Governance relevance: Credibility concerns justify transparency, but they must be corroborated by outcomes to prove control.

Verdict (Reasoned)

Foreign ownership: Material but not controlling on total FI. Fed is concentrated; total FI is less so.
Affiliated imports: Mostly a composition valve (lean trim, timing); not shown to be a standing price lever once fundamentals are controlled.
Outcomes: Bid dispersion breathes, margins cycle (including loss periods), spreads track utilization and retail; not a durable, nationality-based control mechanism.
Governance: JBS/J&F history elevates scrutiny and supports transparency reforms, but it does not establish market control on its own.

Finding: The claim of foreign control of U.S. beef as a durable, market-wide pricing power is not proven on the economic record. Heightened transparency and compliance are warranted; a verdict of control is not.

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

Your Next Read: Did Meatpackers Collude to Raise Beef Prices?
You Be The Judge: The Big Bad Beef Packers Are On Trial

Nalivka: Beef Industry Prices Prove the Market is Working

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:09:27 GMT

Beef prices are high and the market is working — perhaps, the best it ever has from the cattlemen’s perspective.

Brooke Rollins, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, recently outlined the USDA’s “multi-step plan” to bring down beef prices including:

Releasing 5 million acres of federal land for ranchers to lease,
Implementing programs for young ranchers to get loans,
Working with the “Make America Healthy Again” movement,
Opening new, smaller, processing plants to promote Beef Made in America, and
Buying a larger quota of beef from Argentina.

In that same interview, Rollins also indicated that prices should come down in the spring of 2026 and at least during the second half of the year. Though I understand the politics of consumer prices, those politics are currently inconsistent with the economics of the cattle industry, particularly when U.S. consumer beef demand has been a significant driver to beef prices.

I disagree with both the USDA’s multi-step plan and their assessment of when beef prices will come down. I am not alone in making that statement.

Cattle numbers will continue to decline into 2026 unless there was a considerable number of heifers held as replacements from the 2023 calf crop and bred in 2024 to calve this year (2025). That is not the situation if USDA’s January 1 Cattle Inventory, Monthly Cattle on Feed reports and Cattle Slaughter reports were correct. Aside from the reports, I did not hear any conversation amongst cattlemen they were retaining and breeding heifers to build herds during 2024.

A review of heifer slaughter shows that through the first week of November, it was down 6% from a year ago, but a better comparison might be for 2014 when cattlemen were expanding herds during the previous cattle cycle. That year, herd rebuilding began after eight years of liquidation.

Heifer slaughter through the first week of November this year was up 10% over that same period in 2014. For all of 2014, during herd rebuilding, the industry slaughtered 10% fewer heifers than during 2013 and the cattle inventory grew 1% from the beginning of 2013 to the beginning of 2014.

Though heifer slaughter this year is down 6% from 2024, I do not believe we will see increased cattle numbers for January 2026. Cattlemen did not begin to rebuild herds during 2024. I expect the initial steps of herd rebuilding will begin slowly this year with an increased number of heifers held as replacements from this year’s calf crop.

This herd building scenario will pull down the number of heifers on feed into 2026.

Regarding beef prices, I continue to emphasize that the outlook will be largely dependent upon consumer demand. Regardless of how much supply drops, if consumers are unwilling or unable to pay higher prices, the market will not be sustained.

Did Meatpackers Collude to Raise Beef Prices?

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:18:37 GMT

The rhetoric has been loud — the data has been quiet. Today we put “packer collusion” on trial. The question isn’t whether spreads spiked (they did), or whether concentration exists (it does). The question is whether the spikes were the product of an agreement rather than the predictable result of herd cycles, external events and plant utilization.

The Charges

Count 1 — Price-fixing (Sherman Act §1). An agreement among packers to raise or stabilize prices for beef products, while simultaneously lowering prices for cattle.

Count 2 — Output restriction. An agreement to reduce slaughter/chain speeds to elevate wholesale prices.

Count 3 — Bid suppression/market allocation. An agreement to limit competition for cattle (fewer bids, coordinated schedules, regional allocation).

Legal standard (what must be proved):

Agreement (express or tacit) + anticompetitive intent/effect
Evidence must overcome alternative explanations (supply, utilization, demand, shocks).
Civil = preponderance of the evidence; Criminal = beyond a reasonable doubt.

Prosecution’s Case (what would be needed to convict)

1. Direct evidence (smoking guns)

Emails, messages, calls or meeting notes discussing prices/volumes/bid strategy/kill schedules.
Trade-association sidebars where competitively sensitive forward data are exchanged.

2. Economic fingerprints that don’t wash out with fundamentals

Sustained super-normal profits across multiple years after COVID/outages, materially above cost of capital.
Spread persistence: live↔cutout spreads remain abnormally high once utilization normalizes.
Price convergence: regional bid dispersion collapses nationwide even after controlling for freight, quality, weather, and distance to plant.
Coordinated capacity discipline: parallel slowdowns or kill cuts not attributable to labor, maintenance, or regulation.
Procurement anomalies: bid rotations, unusual “no-bid” patterns across buyers, punishment for undercutting.

3. Patterns around non-fundamental dates

Spreads jump around communication or lawsuit milestones but NOT around observable shocks (fires, labor, black swan events).

Defense’s Case

Exhibit A: Ground Beef Price vs Cattle Price

(The Big Bad Beef Packer)

Fact: Wholesale & cattle track; as cattle prices rise and fall, so do wholesale ground beef prices.
Data points: Only major deviation occurred during COVID, when store shelves were cleared out and production capacity experienced a major shock.
Interpretation: Wholesale ≠ packer margin; category management, labor, and packaging explain much of the higher wholesale gap.

Exhibit B: Operating Margins - Oligopolies

(The Big Bad Beef Packer)

Fact: Packer margins rise and fall with herd expansion, market shocks, and capacity constraints. Other oligopolies, such as wireless carriers, see similar price changes; albeit at a higher operating margin level.
Interpretation: If a beef “cartel” existed, you wouldn’t see loss years; losses are consistent with rising cattle costs outpacing cutout during tight supply + throughput frictions. Further, oligopolies see fierce competition, which, when kept in check, produce better quality and a cheaper value for consumers.

Exhibit C: Price Spreads

(Economic Research Service - Meat Price Spreads)

Fact: Wholesale to farm meat spreads have seen only modest increases over the past 50 years; COVID is the outlier. Retail to wholesale spreads tell a completely different story.
Interpretation: What farmers are paid for cattle and packers are paid for beef align across more than half a century (outside of COVID). Contrarily, the price consumers pay at the retail counter has been a runaway train.

Exhibit D: Beef Dollar by Industry Segment

(Economic Research Service - Meat Price Spreads)

Fact: From 1970 to 2025, packers’ % of the beef dollar has decreased 7%, farms’ % of the beef dollar has dropped 10%, while the retailer has increased 18%.
Interpretation: Prior to packer concentration concerns, 1970-1980, the packers’ % of the beef was 12%. From 1981 to 2025, the average drops to 9%. While a modest bump was seen in the years following the last cattle cycle downturn (2013-2015), the past 10 years were only 12%.

Observed facts that CONTRADICT a cartel:

Spike & reversion: Spreads fall back as utilization recovers.
Regional dispersion: Basis/bids vary by region and plant outages.
Loss years: Public P/L shows red ink; cartels won’t tolerate that.
Retail stickiness: Category pricing and costs break any 1:1 pass-through story.

Jury Instructions (how to weigh the case)

Step 1: Do utilization, herd, and shocks explain the lion’s share of spread variation?
Step 2: After controlling for these, is there a durable, unexplained elevation consistent with agreement?
Step 3: Do we have direct communications or procurement anomalies consistent with coordination?
Step 4: Do profits remain consistently super-normal across normal periods?

If the answer to Steps 2–4 is no, reasonable doubt remains.

Verdict

Count 1 (Price-fixing): Not Proven. The clearest spread spikes coincide with capacity shocks (Holcomb, COVID) and herd dynamics; spreads compress as plants normalize. No durable, post-shock elevation or persistent super-normal profits are shown in the long-run data.

Count 2 (Output restriction): Not Proven. Throughput reductions align with cattle availability/labor/safety/maintenance realities. We lack evidence of coordinated slowdowns absent operational and cattle inventory causality.

Count 3 (Bid suppression/market allocation): Not Proven. Regional dispersion and loss years undermine a national coordination story. Absent documentary evidence or procurement anomalies, the burden is unmet.

Final finding: The price behavior is best explained by herd cycles + utilization + retail stickiness. The prosecution has not cleared the economic or legal bar for collusion.

“Sentencing” (reforms that actually help)

Even with a “Not Proven” verdict, the system can work better. Apply remedies that lower volatility and raise trust:

Spread transparency: A consistent, public gross spread definition (Comprehensive Cutout + Drop − 5-Area Live) published monthly.
Data access: Encourage scanner data and regional basis publication, with clear methodology notes.
Voluntary labeling: Keep MCOOL program-based and auditable; don’t sell it as a price-lowering tool.
Targeted trade tools, not blunt ones: Avoid broad Section 232 quotas/tariffs that raise consumer prices on lean trim without fixing supply.

Closing

The market doesn’t need a scapegoat to explain beef prices. It needs throughput, better transparency, and a shared understanding of the facts.

When we measure the right things — herd size, utilization, spreads, and the composition of imports — the picture is coherent.

That’s the truth. It’s less thrilling than a soundbite and far more useful to ranchers, feeders, packers, retailers, policymakers, and consumers.

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

Your Next Read: You Be The Judge: The Big Bad Beef Packers Are On Trial

CAB Insider: Market Update Nov. 19

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:32:43 GMT

The fed cattle market continued the downtrend last week as pressure from Live Cattle futures and lower boxed beef values weighed on the total beef complex. The larger volume of cash cattle traded in the north with Nebraska and Iowa prices averaging $224/cwt. for the week. Much smaller negotiated head counts in the south were led by Kansas feedyards receiving an average of $230/cwt. with Texas right behind at $228/cwt.

Total harvest volume increased on the week by 16,000 head to reach 576,000 head total. Just 10,000 head of the increase came from fed steers and heifers, putting that weekly total at 459,000 head.

(CAB)

Carcass weight data remains unavailable despite the government reopening but estimates are that average steer/heifer weights should now be near or above 950 lb. Excellent feedlot pen conditions and moderate October-November temperatures have likely added to the year-over-year weight increases which have averaged +24 pounds over last year.

Carcass cutout values have been weaker in November, a pattern which is not atypical for the month. The comprehensive cutout has averaged a 3% decline from the beginning to the end of November in the past three years. With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up next week it’s unlikely that spot market beef business will be sharp enough to support upward wholesale beef prices this week or next.

Tracking Premiums to the Source

Merchandising carcasses is not an easy task. If you ask any ranch-to-table producer what their largest pain points are, you are likely to hear that finding a customer for all of the end meats can be a challenge. That producer likely has excess ground beef supplies just waiting for a customer with a similarly large need. The middle meats are typically easier to move and undersupplied in comparison.

This issue has plagued startup branded beef programs for a few decades. A solid cattle supply plan coupled with a promising marketing niche has been undercut time and time again by the inability to sell the end meats at the necessary premium to make the business model profitable.

Certified Angus Beef faced the same challenges in the formative years, as the first branded beef label set out to garner specification-based premiums in a market where none existed. Now in its 47th year, the brand has successfully carved out premiums over commodity USDA Choice from end to end of the carcass.

(CAB)

On a dollars per primal basis, the loin is untouchable when it comes to the CAB markup with a heavy-hitting combination. Constituting 21.3% of total carcass weight, the loin’s key premium-grabbing cuts, such as the tenderloin, strip loin and top butt, push the loin primal to the top of the carcass without fail. In the brand’s 2025 fiscal year, the loin premium added $51.06 per head to CAB carcasses over Choice.

Many are surprised to learn that the chuck primal is the second largest premium contributor to the CAB carcass, calculating a $38.84 per head premium. The chuck edges out the rib’s total return simply because of its distinct weight advantage at 2.6 times that of the rib. Interestingly, the chuck’s average CAB premium per pound over Choice has advanced such that the chuck moved up to second in the premium hierarchy as recently as 2023. The CAB rib, unsurprisingly, captures just over double the premium per pound when compared to the chuck. The rib added $30.39 per head over Choice in the fiscal 2025 data, contributing just 11.4% of total carcass weight but 18% of the total premium contribution to the carcass.

The round is the last of the four major carcass primals when it comes to the brand’s premium contribution. At 22.3% of carcass weight, the round has traditionally offered less premium opportunity, as these cuts are often less tender than others, often utilized for roasts and ground beef. These factors tend to limit the CAB round premium, landing at $17.68 per head value-add for the year.

Total CAB premiums per head quickly diminish as weight rapidly declines across the brisket, plate and flank. Premiums per pound are quite attractive for briskets and plates, nearing $0.13/lb. for the year. Yet those two combined are just 12% of total carcass weight, limiting their impact as compared to the much heavier primals that carry even larger premiums per pound.

What Does Talk of $10 Ground Beef Mean to Producers?

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:00:35 GMT

While the core fundamentals of the beef industry remain unchanged, the overall environment has become much more volatile and uncertain in recent weeks.

Omaha Steaks CEO Nate Rempe, in a recent interview on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria , predicts ground beef prices will reach $10 per pound by the third quarter of 2026.

In response to that prediction, ag economist Glynn Tonsor from Kansas State University reports, according to September Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the national average price for ground beef was $6.32 per pound. He explains while niche markets such as Omaha Steaks could see some products priced at $10, the national average is unlikely to reach that level within the next three years.

Tonsor emphasizes Omaha Steaks serves a distinct customer base, and their prices should not be generalized to represent all U.S. ground beef prices.

Lance Zimmerman, senior animal protein analyst with Rabo AgriFinance, adds: “It’s possible, but that’d be pretty wild. Is it probable? I would say no, based on history.”

He explains his stance also referring to the BLS historic data, although prices spiked radically during the pandemic posting the highest year-over-year increases on record, that event only resulted in a 34% jump, far short of the 54% increase needed to see $10 ground beef by the third quarter of 2026.

What Does All This Beef Chatter Cause?

The beef industry has found itself in national headlines since Sept. 15. The industry has been experiencing chaos in the markets since President Donald Trump made statements regarding the need to lower beef prices as well as his request for the Department of Justice to investigate meatpackers for driving up the price of beef.

“The base fundamentals of the industry have not changed in the last four weeks,” Tonsor says. “The volatility, the noise in the business environment, has definitely elevated.”

Read more about the industry chaos today:
Beef Industry Chaos: Tight Supplies, Strong Consumer Demand and Political Interference

Zimmerman explains while political sound bites and promises to lower food prices draw media attention, they do not directly affect the day-to-day decisions by producers who remain focused on long-term business fundamentals.

“At the end of the day, the average cow-calf producer, stocker operator and feedlot operator, have a business to run, and all of this noise doesn’t change much surrounding their day-to-day business,” Zimmerman summarizes. “The challenge is the president is making this a very regular soundbite, as is the rest of his administration. And, cyclically, there is no quick fix.”

Zimmerman shares his frustration regarding the broader impact of political statements, especially presidential promises to bring down food prices. He explains that, historically, the only way to significantly reduce food costs is to enter a recession. The catch, he argues, is that neither administration nor producers desire such an outcome. This underscores the conflict between policy rhetoric and on-the-ground market drivers.

Tonsor adds media attention and dramatic statements, such as $10 ground beef, often do not accurately represent broad market reality.

“I’m trying to use this as an excuse to educate on why prices are higher; [it’s] not just because cow numbers are down,” Tonsor explains. “When we just jump to the number of cows, we don’t give credit to the demand story that the public wants beef.”

Read more about beef demand:
Consumers Confirm Protein is In: Meat Continues to Have Its Moment on the Plate
How Many Minutes Does a Consumer Have to Work to Buy A Pound of Ground Beef?

One question on the mind of producers and industry stakeholders is if the political and media attention will heighten consumer awareness to beef prices and cause a change in buying behavior.

Tonsor says, so far, there is little impact from these headlines on consumer demand.

“It’s too early to tell if there’s been a consumer demand impact from all the chatter,” he says. “My best guess is little-to-no direct impact.”

Both analysts agree beef prices are fueled by demand. Tonsor notes consumers are willing to pay the retail price of beef today because of their continued demand for taste and protein. He points out if public demand for beef stays strong, prices will remain robust.

“The public still thinks taste is the most important thing when they make a decision,” he summarizes.

Slowing Down Rebuilding

“This uncertainty has wrecked the market potential in Chicago in the short run,” Zimmerman explains. “But the timing of it also couldn’t be worse for the cow-calf producer who’s making those fall retention decisions right now.”

Both analysts agree the heightened uncertainty is making producers more hesitant to invest or expand their herds, which will lead to slower industry investment and herd growth.

Read more about herd rebuilding:
Rebuilding the U.S. Cow Herd: A Calculated Climb

“I think we’re going to slow investment compared to even a month ago, just because those that are anxious or don’t like uncertainty are a little more cautious today than they were a month ago,” Tonsor explains. “Those that are extra uncomfortable with elevated uncertainty, like not knowing what the trade environment might be, it’s going to give them pause. So, they will be less likely to hold back a heifer and expand. They’ll be less likely to modernize the feedyard. They’ll be less likely to do whatever that capital investment was.”

Will Tarriff Reduction Impact Prices?

Late last week, Trump signed an executive order that modifies the scope of the reciprocal tariffs he first announced on April 2. The executive order now exempts several agricultural products from tariffs, including beef.

Zimmerman explains Brazil’s beef processors and beef exporters would have gained the most if the country’s additional tariffs were removed by the U.S. The previous rate was an additional 50% tariff on top of the 26.4% tariff that exists on all imports from countries without a free-trade agreement on beef after the first 65,005 MT each calendar year. However, the Brazil tariffs are structured under two separate practices. Ten percent are reciprocal tariffs, and the additional 40% that came in August are through another process.

“The latest removal of reciprocal tariffs on beef effectively changes Brazil’s country-specific import tax from 50% to 40%,” he explains. “This is not going to significantly change the competitive landscape for global exporters shipping into the U.S. market. It is still incredibly tough for Brazil to compete with Australia, New Zealand and other major lean beef importers in the U.S. market.”

Tonsor adds reducing tariffs could marginally lower beef prices for consumers, but the effect would not be dramatic. He points out the U.S. produces the majority of its own beef (more than 80%), so changes in import tariffs have a limited impact on domestic prices.

He says recent record import months only moved the import share from around 15% to slightly more than 20%. Tonsor expects the net effect of the tariff reduction on beef prices to be fairly small, potentially less than a 5%-to-10% change, and that overall, strong domestic demand will continue to be the main driver of prices.

Challenge to Producers

Tonsor says his advice to producers is to steady the ship.

He encourages a steady approach, suggesting those comfortable with uncertainty should move forward as planned, while others might pause on major decisions. Ultimately, he expects less herd expansion and more caution among producers, even as demand fundamentals continue to provide underlying strength for the industry.

Tonsor says while general industry investment and expansion might slow, producers who move forward despite the uncertainty could be rewarded, especially if fewer others do the same. His overall message is for producers to carefully weigh their risk tolerance and business needs before making significant changes and not to let the current noise distract from their long-term goals.

Despite recent market corrections, Zimmerman says strong demand and cyclical tightness mean profitability remains high for most producers. He shares these six strategies for producers to consider looking forward:

Consider Strategic Heifer Retention. He advises producers to begin or continue retaining heifers, even if only enough to replace natural attrition in the cow herd, as a step toward gradual herd rebuilding in tight supply conditions.
Use Price Protection Tools. He emphasizes the importance of locking in profit floors using risk management tools such as Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) insurance , futures or options contracts, encouraging producers not to wait for the highest prices but to protect profitability when opportunities arise.
Maintain Long-Term Perspective. Despite recent market corrections, he urges producers to keep a long-term view; demand is strong, and rebuilding will be slow, so planning for sustained higher prices is key.
Stay Vigilant and Informed. He recommends producers remain watchful for profit opportunities in the market, be proactive in their strategic decisions and stay informed about both market trends and policy changes.
Be Cautious, Not Reactionary. He suggests not overreacting to political headlines or media narratives, emphasizing that day-to-day operational fundamentals should guide decisions rather than short-term noise.
Prepare for Continued Volatility. He encourages resilience and adaptation strategies as the industry faces persistent uncertainty from trade policy and disease threats such as New World screwworm .

Your Next Read: Did the Administration’s Plan to Lower Beef Prices Wreck the Bull Run in the Cattle Market?

Cull Cows Defy Seasonality

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:55:56 GMT

All the talk of relaxing tariffs on imported beef, knowing that the majority of our beef imports are lean beef trimmings to go into ground beef competing with cull cow beef, suggested it might be time to take a quick look at the cull cow market.

Most will remember that cull cow prices tend to hit their seasonal lows in the rall. The most important reason for the price decline is that more cows are culled from the herd in the fall.

For beef cattle, the largest proportion of cows are culled in the fall following calf weaning. On the dairy side, cow culling increases from summertime lows. The increase in supplies of cows for sale results in lower prices. Another contributor to lower prices is the end of grilling season, with consumers shifting over to more fall and winter consumption patterns.

(USDA-AMS Livestock Marketing Information Center)

So far this fall, the cull cow market has defied normal seasonality. Southern Plains cull cow auction prices hit about $165 per cwt. back in June and have remained there since then. A couple weeks of declines were followed by rebounds back to about $165 per cwt. National average cutter quality cows have declined recently, slipping about $9 per cwt. to $126.

(USDA-AMS Livestock Marketing Information Center)

While the live cow market has not declined much, the same cannot be said for the cow beef market. The boxed cow beef cutout climbed to $340 per cwt. but has declined to $317 over the last two months. Wholesale 90% lean beef has declined from $436 to $404 per cwt. over the same period. Both the boxed beef cutout and wholesale 90% lean have followed the normal season pattern, declining into the fall.

(USDA-AMS, USDA-NASS Livestock Marketing Information Center)

We are likely to see some increased culling from the dairy side of the beef industry in the coming months. USDA’s latest milk production report indicated the nation’s dairy cow herd at 9.85 million head. That is the largest herd since at least 1993.

Milk production in September was 4% larger than the year before. Milk prices are beginning to decline sharply with increased production. There is no doubt that the increased returns from using beef bull instead of dairy breed semen to produce beef-on-dairy calves is boosting profits and aiding in the dairy herd expansion.

Beef cow culling is likely to remain low due to the historically small cow herd and incentives to expand. More dairy cow culling and less beef cow culling will continue to leave cull cow prices high.

Your Next Read: Beef Industry Chaos: Tight Supplies, Strong Consumer Demand and Political Interference

Is the Beef Market Broken? One Cattleman Says Yes

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:24:40 GMT

Concentration in the beef processing sector has long been a hot-button issue for cattle producers. Several groups have been fighting to break up the “monopoly,” including R-CALF. After 18 years, the organization hopes the Department of Justice (DOJ) will finally fix the problem. This optimism comes after President Trump’s request for DOJ to immediately begin an investigation into meatpackers for driving up the price of beef.

R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard says their ongoing lawsuit is based on the premise the meat-packing monopoly has resulted in price fixing.

“We have alleged that the meat packers had unlawfully colluded in order to artificially depress cattle prices, while at the same time raising or inflating the price of beef to the consumers,” he explains.

Currently 85% of the U.S. beef packing industry is owned by four entities, and Bullard says the meat packers are in clear violation of antitrust law.

“Both the producers on the beginning of the supply chain and consumers at the end of the supply chain were exploited as a result of this monopolistic marketing structure that we have in the cattle industry and beef industry today,” he says.

Could High Beef Prices Just be Supply and Demand?

Bullard refutes the current high beef prices are just a function of supply and demand, including the historic low in the cattle herd due to drought.

“It wasn’t until the economic shock, that straw that broke the camel’s back, that our cattle prices started to chase those beef prices upward,” he adds.

But Beef Packers are Losing Money

Bullard also discounts packers such as JBS showing nearly $300 million of losses in the second quarter of 2025 as evidence the packers aren’t making money from the high beef prices at the consumer level.

“Perhaps some of the losses that they made on their slaughtering side were made up from the margins of buying cheaper imports and passing it off to unsuspecting consumers as if it were a domestic product,” he predicts.

What Makes This Investigation Different?

However, the DOJ investigated packers in 2019 after the Holcomb, Kan., plant fire and again during COVID when consumers paid record beef prices while producers received record low cattle prices. So what makes this investigation different? Bullard says he thinks this is part of that ongoing probe.

“It’s our understanding or belief that the investigations that were first started under Trump administration one are continuing today,” he explains. “So the President’s recent announcement, I think, will encourage and incentivize the Justice Department to culminate their investigation and actually take enforcement action in order to protect independent cattle producers and consumers alike.”

Although he’s not sure what enforcement might look like, or if the packers could be broken up as a result.

“We’re hopeful that’s what we’ll see, we’ll see the Department of Justice actually file a lawsuit, alleging the beef packers have violated the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and Packers and Stockyards Act, to the detriment of independent producers and U .S. consumers,” he says.

While they’ve been waiting six years for their suit to be heard in court, he thinks the President will fast track the action and finally fix a market that has been fundamentally broken for years.

For more on Bullard’s conversation with Michelle Rook, listen to AgriTalk:

Your Next Read: Beef Industry Chaos: Tight Supplies, Strong Consumer Demand and Political Interference

Beef Industry Chaos: Tight Supplies, Strong Consumer Demand and Political Interference

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:04:16 GMT

The current state of the cattle market and beef industry has been described as chaotic. “There’s chaos in cattle,” as Chip Flory, AgriTalk host, put it.

The industry turmoil follows recent statements made by President Donald Trump regarding the need to lower beef prices as well as his request for the Department of Justice to immediately begin an investigation into meatpackers for driving up the price of beef.

Derrell Peel, Extension livestock marketing specialist from Oklahoma State University, affirms these are unique times, emphasizing while political factors have always indirectly influenced agriculture, it’s unprecedented for the cattle and beef markets to be at the center of direct political debate.

On a recent AgriTalk segment, Peel points out the inherent biological and production constraints of the cattle industry — particularly the fixed timeline to raise cattle — make quick fixes impossible. Both Flory and Peel stress that no political policy can shorten the cattle production process; any effective supply response requires patience and long-term adjustment.

Packers Under Fire

The concept of industry consolidation and foreign packer ownership has long drawn scrutiny with frequent government investigations. Peel says highly concentrated industries such as beef packing have been targets for skepticism and regulatory attention for over a century, to the point suspicion of packers is almost “a cultural thing” within segments of the industry.

He characterizes the latest call as another attempt to target convenient scapegoats rather than addressing deeper systemic realities of supply and demand.

“The reason we have the industry structure we do is because the economies of size and cost efficiencies are such a powerful economic force,” Peels explains.

He confirms researchers have long studied market power, and while concentration does have a small negative price impact for producers, the efficiency and cost-savings from large-scale firms more than compensate. These benefits, he says, keep cattle prices higher for producers and beef prices lower for consumers than they would be with a less efficient structure.

Dissecting the economics of margin markets Peels explains why price changes in different parts of the beef supply chain — cow-calf, feeders, packers and retailers — don’t move in lockstep. He uses a “bungee cord” analogy to illustrate the complex, dynamic and time-lagged interactions linking cattle prices at the farm with retail beef prices.

“All cattle prices and beef prices are ultimately connected, but they’re not connected with a stick or a chain,” Peel summarizes.” They’re connected with a bungee cord. There’s just an enormous amount of dynamics in this thing.”

Regarding the foreign ownership debate, Peel says there is no evidence foreign ownership alters packer behavior within the U.S. marketplace. He emphasizes foreign firms have made large investments in U.S. facilities and continue to operate them by the same market logic that would govern domestic ownership.

He also points out it is unclear who else would be in a position to make such significant investments if these foreign companies were not involved. This pragmatic view suggests the ownership issue might be less important than is commonly believed, at least concerning everyday operations and market outcomes.

A Lot Hinges on Rebuilding the Cow Herd

In his latest article, “ All Bets are Off ,” Peel says: “The latest edition in the torrent of recent political attentions directed at the cattle and beef industry includes allegations of market manipulation against the beef packing industry. Beef packers are the one segment that has been most negatively impacted in the current market, incurring huge losses due to poor margins and limited cattle supplies.”

(Meat Institute)

Peel reports packers have been losing enormous amounts of money for about the past 18 to 24 months. According to the Meat Institute, packer margins slipped into the red in September 2024. Through the week ending Oct. 4, 2025, packer margins were a negative $126.50 per head, up slightly from a year earlier at a negative $125.65 per head, according to Sterling Profit Tracker. The outlook for the year is a negative $165.96 per head packer margin.

“There’s just simply not enough cattle for them to operate at cost efficient capacities,” Peel explains.

This negative trend was anticipated — the reduced supply of cattle has made it difficult for packing plants to function at cost-efficient capacities, leading to the accumulation of operating losses. Peel points out the combination of low unit margins and insufficient cattle supplies challenges the economic viability of packers, further illustrating the complexity of the current environment.

This decline in inventory is not the result of a single factor but is driven by several years of drought and other market pressures. It is clear high beef and cattle prices are a result of these tight supplies and, according to Peel, these high prices are likely to persist for several years. The industry simply cannot turn around production levels quickly, and it will take time — a matter of years, not months — for conditions to normalize.

“Using logic that only works in the office of a politician, packers are supposedly wielding unacceptable market power while paying record high cattle prices and artificially raising beef prices … but not enough to avoid losing a couple hundred dollars on every animal they process — certainly many millions of dollars,” Peel says. “If beef packers had any significant ability to exercise market power, I am certain that we would not have record high cattle prices and packers would not be losing money.”

Peel suggests the federal government attacks on beef packers are aided and supported by a vocal minority of the cattle industry and a few sympathetic politicians who view packers as a perennial villain and always worthy of attack anytime the opportunity is presented.

“The timing of such attacks this time is particularly puzzling as dismantling the packing industry would certainly jeopardize current record high cattle prices and the best economic returns most producers have ever enjoyed,” Peels says. “I guess some cowboys just can’t stand prosperity.”

R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard says the cattle market is fundamentally broken citing years of an inverse relationship between falling cattle prices and increasing retail beef prices when the only ingredient in beef is cattle. Read more about his perspective.

Patience not Politics

Beef and cattle prices, Peel notes, are historically high, a result of industry-wide low cattle inventory. Rebuilding the nation’s cow herd will be a long, slow process, keeping prices elevated for an extended period. And Peel says there is no definitive evidence producers are saving heifers to start the rebuilding process.

“2025 may prove to be technically the cyclical low, but 2026 is going to be barely bigger, if it is, and no growth in 2026 and probably none in 2027 ... it’s 2028 into 2029 before that turns into increased beef production,” Peel predicts.

He summarizes neither regulatory nor political action will can speed up the rebuilding process. It will take years of concerted effort, market healing and stability before the industry can expect a meaningful rebound in herd numbers and production — a reality that requires patience across the industry.

“There is absolutely nothing anybody can do to make beef prices go down, or cattle prices, other than maybe tear up the industry completely,” Peels says. “And if we tear up the industry, it’ll make cattle prices go down, but it won’t make beef prices go down. It’ll make beef prices go even higher for consumers and the only way to fix this is to give the industry time to rebuild, and that’s going to take two to four years if we ever get started.”

He says a majority of cattle producers understand the beef industry is extremely complex and all segments are critical and essential.

“Though the outcome of current political actions is uncertain, the potential for long-term harm to the industry is substantial,” Peel says. “Anytime politics trumps economics, the strong supply and demand fundamentals that have determined the outlook for the industry to this point become irrelevant. Expectations for prices and production going forward are now completely clouded…therefore… all bets are off.”

Your Next Read: You Be The Judge: The Big Bad Beef Packers Are On Trial

You Be The Judge: The Big Bad Beef Packers Are On Trial

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:09:45 GMT

Beef prices rise and fall for the same unglamorous reasons they always have: supply cycles, plant utilization and downstream demand. That story doesn’t fit in a headline, so the search for villains keeps returning — secret control, foreign dominance and collusion.

This article addresses three claims head-on:

Packers colluded to raise prices
The BIG 4 and foreign-owned firms control U.S. beef
Packers set cattle and retail prices at will.

The truth is less thrilling than a press conference or soundbite, but it is, well... the truth!

Debunk No. 1: Packers colluded to raise prices

Many have said the BIG 4’s decisions to settle price fixing claims out of court is an admission of guilt. However, through many industry contacts, the true nature of the price fixing settlements came from each firm deciding it was far cheaper to settle than to continue paying legal fees. While this was understandably logical, it created more scrutiny as it made the packers look guilty — even if they were innocent.

If collusion were the driver, you wouldn’t see a continued increase in the spread between wholesale and retail prices, nor would you see packer spreads expand and contract with plant utilization bottlenecks.

Herd cycles drive the baseline. When the national herd tightens, prices lift. When the herd rebuilds, they ease.
Margins behave within supply constraints, operational efficiencies and consumer preferences — not conspiracies. Spreads widen when plants can’t run (labor, downtime, COVID, etc.), and compress when chain speeds normalize.
The “spike” periods line up with observable shocks, not back-room meetings.

Exhibit A - Ground Beef - Who Should the Consumer Blame for Higher Prices?

(The Big Bad Beef Packer, Hyrum Egbert)

2011 to 2013: Ground beef spread between retail and wholesale = $1.64/lb.
2023 to 2025: Ground beef spread between retail and wholesale = $3.22/lb.
Spikes in wholesale price, away from the dressed cattle price, are reflective of COVID and the lingering effects of the glut of cattle in 2021 and 2022.
The price reflected in retail does not translate to the packer.

So what? Collusion isn’t required to explain any of the big moves. The cattle cycle and plant utilization do the heavy lifting.

Debunk No. 2: The BIG 4 and foreign-owned packers control U.S. beef

This talking point usually leans on fed-cattle concentration and then generalizes to the entire beef market. That’s a category error. While the BIG 4 have between 80% to 85% of the fed production capacity, they only have about 50% of the non-fed beef production.

Counting all federally inspected beef (fed and non-fed) changes the picture. Non-fed volume (cows/bulls) is material and not monopolized by any single group.
Concentration is variable — not a one-way march. The BIG 4 share has moved with investment cycles, openings/closures and permitting/labor constraints.
Profit data doesn’t match the control story: persistent, outsize returns would be the tell. Outside of shock windows, long-run segment margins in public filings sit in the low single digits (see the Tyson graph below).

What portion is foreign-owned? Using total FI production (fed + non-fed) rather than fed-only stats, the combined share held by foreign-owned firms JBS and National Beef is meaningfully lower than headlines.

A reasonable, plant-by-plant roll-up over the last decade typically places their combined share in the low–to–mid 30% range of total FI beef, varying by year as capacity and throughput shift. The exact value depends on which year you pick and whether you measure capacity or actual production. But in either case, it is well below “control of the whole industry.”

While it is important for the country to keep tabs on foreign-owned interests, especially in our food supply chain, we should be careful about miss-characterizing their actual influence on the market.

So what? Ownership headlines make noise; capacity and throughput make prices. The practical chokepoint for ranchers, feeders, and consumers is capacity resilience; labor, downtime, logistics, permitting, not the nationality of owners.

Debunk No. 3: Packers control cattle and retail prices

Prices move because the chain is… a chain. Live cattle trade into the wholesale cutout, and wholesale gets translated into retail categories with delays, packaging, labor and merchandising layered on top.

Key points:

Live ↔ wholesale co-movement is structural. Cattle supply and plant speed determine how quickly shocks pass through and how wide spreads get.
Retail is sticky by design. Grocers price to categories and promotions — not to a daily cattle quote. That’s why your ground beef figure shows wholesale and cattle tracking while retail moves on a different cadence.
And if packers truly “set” prices, they wouldn’t periodically lose money for more than year at a time. Yet, they do.

Exhibit B - Profit Margin by Segment

(The Big Bad Beef Packer, Hyrum Egbert)

Sterling publishes a Beef Profit Tracker that outlines expected returns by segment in the industry.
Adapting this information and overlaying Dressed Cattle Price and the Choice Cutout, it becomes clear that market control is clearly not in the hands of the packer (or anyone).
The accelerated rise in cattle prices, due to supply, has outpaced the cutout and led to major packer losses.

Exhibit C - Tyson vs S&P

(The Big Bad Beef Packer, Hyrum Egbert)

Tyson Beef versus S&P: ~4% average segment operating margin across 17 years. Only the COVID dislocation produced standout highs. That’s not a price-setting juggernaut. That’s a cyclical, asset-intensive business struggling to survive.

So what? Why would the beef packers, with all the alleged control over prices and markets, lose money some years, and underperform equity markets by more than 50%?

Notes for policy staffers (pragmatic, data-first)

Country-of-Origin Labeling (beef): Don’t sell mandatory labels as a price-lowering tool. Past scanner data didn’t produce a durable retail demand lift. Keep origin claims voluntary and program-based for customers who will pay.
Imports: Incremental flows are predominantly lean trim, offsetting non-fed shortages and keeping grinds available. Blunt Section 232 quotas/tariffs raise consumer prices without fixing structural supply.
Grazing/public lands: Additional acreage helps over time, but herd rebuilds are multi-year and capital-intensive. Anchor expectations in timelines, not headlines.
Transparency: Back consistent monthly reporting on capacity utilization and live↔cutout spreads, plus better outage reporting. Reducing rumor gaps lowers volatility without picking winners.

Brief Rebuttal FAQ

“If there’s no control, why did packer margins spike in 2020?”
Because capacity collapsed. When dozens of shifts vanish, wholesale outruns live supply. Spreads narrowed as chain speeds recovered.

“Don’t foreign owners dominate U.S. beef?”
Not really. On total FI beef, JBS + National Beef generally sit in the low–to–mid 30% combined share, moving with capacity and production each year; not domination.

“Would mandatory origin labels fix retail prices?”
No. They add cost and didn’t produce a durable demand bump last time. Voluntary, auditable programs capture premiums without taxing everyone.

“Retail doesn’t track cattle, doesn’t that prove manipulation?”
Retail is category-managed and sticky. Labor, packaging and promotions add inertia. That’s why wholesale/cattle co-move while retail moves on a different cadence.

Conclusion

The U.S. beef complex doesn’t need a boogeyman to explain price behavior. It needs sober arithmetic and better throughput. When you measure the right things — herd size, utilization, spreads and the composition of imports — 25 years of history line up. The truth may be boring. It’s also what helps ranchers, feeders, packers, retailers and consumers make better decisions.

Your Next Read: Trump Asks DOJ to Investigate Meatpackers over Beef Prices

— Hyrum Egbert authors the biweekly “ The Big Bad Beef Packer ” newsletter, which takes a look at packinghouse truths, trends and tough questions.

Trump Asks DOJ to Investigate Meatpackers over Beef Prices

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 21:41:18 GMT

President Donald Trump says he wants the Department of Justice to immediately begin an investigation into meatpackers for driving up the price of beef. The directive marks a turnabout from previous statements about U.S. ranchers making good profits and their impact on the price of beef at the grocery store, which the administration has said remains too high.

In a statement on his Truth Social site, the president calls for “An investigation into the meat packing companies who are driving up the price of beef through illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.”

He says American ranchers are being blamed for what is being done by majority-foreign-owned meatpackers.

“[The packers] artificially inflate prices and jeopardize the security of our nation’s food supply,” writes Trump. “Action must be taken immediately to protect consumers, combat illegal monopolies and ensure these corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American people.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi responding to the post saying the DOJ investigation is already underway.

”My Antitrust Division, led by [Abigail Slater, Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division], has taken the lead in partnership with our friend [Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins] at USDA,” she says.

Our investigation is underway! My Antitrust Division led by @AAGSlater has taken the lead in partnership with our friend @SecRollins at @USDA. https://t.co/KP0zlO9RQg
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) November 7, 2025

Rollins, also responded to Trump’s social post, thanking him for standing up for America’s farmers, ranchers and consumers.

“For far too long, hardworking ranching families have been squeezed by massive foreign-owned meatpacking corporations manipulating prices and driving family operations out of business,” Rollins wrote. “These global monopolies profit while everyday Americans pay more at the grocery store and rural communities struggle to survive.”

Rollins, in her post, calls for transparency and accountability that lead to a fair market for beef producers.

THANK YOU, @POTUS for standing up for America’s farmers, ranchers, and consumers! 🇺🇸

For far too long, hardworking ranching families have been squeezed by massive foreign-owned meatpacking corporations manipulating prices and driving family operations out of business. These… https://t.co/qiftHNtA1q
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) November 7, 2025

“Thank you, President Trump, for fighting for the heartland, for our farmers and ranchers, and for standing up to the corrupt forces that threaten our food security and American independence,” Rollins said.

According to Reuters , “Ranchers have long complained about consolidation in the packing industry, where Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef Packing Co. together control around 80% of the market.”

Industry Reaction

The Meat Institute released a statement following President Trump’s comments:

“Despite high consumer prices for beef, beef packers have been losing money because the price of cattle is at record highs,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts. “For more than a year, beef packers have been operating at a loss due to a tight cattle supply and strong demand.

“The beef industry is heavily regulated, and market transactions are transparent. The government’s own data from USDA confirms that the beef packing sector is experiencing catastrophic losses and experts predict this will continue into 2026.

“U.S. beef processors welcome a fact-based discussion about beef affordability and how best to meet the needs of American consumers, who are the industry’s most important stakeholders.

“Beef packers rely on cattle producers and cattle producers rely on beef packers. The entire beef value chain is strongest when supply is balanced by demand. Beef packers remain committed to ensuring safe, delicious, and nutrient dense beef remains affordable to American families who rely on its nourishment. We welcome the President and his team to visit our members’ beef facilities, both large and small, to witness firsthand the pride, skill, and dedication they bring to their work every single day.”

For more on beef and cattle market conditions go here.

United States Cattlemen’s Association shared their thoughts on social media , “Yes, let’s keep American ranchers out of the crosshairs. But, USCA will continue to state that beef prices in the grocery store are not too high. Prices are a direct reflection of consumer demand — consumers want US beef.

“Ranchers continue to show resilience and dedication, battling drought, inflation, and unpredictable pressures daily, yet still deliver top-quality, safe beef for families across the country.”

National Farmer’s Union also shared these thoughts : “We agree— American ranchers aren’t to blame for high beef prices.”

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard issued the following statement in response to the announcement.

“We greatly appreciate President Trump’s announcement that he’s directed the Department of Justice to investigate the beef supply chain to determine if there are any violations of our fair competition laws or antitrust laws.

“There has long been a disconnect between cattle prices and beef prices, and we believe this is evidence of market failure. We welcome this investigation to ensure that cattle producers receive competitive prices for their cattle, and that consumers pay prices set by a competitive market rather than a monopolistic one.”

Previous Retail Price Comments

Trump previously posted : “The Cattle ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% tariff on Brazil.”

Donald J. Trump Truth Social 10.22.25 12:42 PM EST

The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil. If…
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) October 22, 2025

Following the post, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) made a post on Facebook in response and also released a statement on the president’s steps to undercut U.S. cattle producers: “In a misguided effort to lower the price of beef in grocery stores, President Trump said he plans to increase the volume of beef being imported from Argentina . Efforts to manipulate markets only risk damaging the livelihoods of American cattlemen and women, while doing little to impact the price consumers are paying at the grocery store.”

“The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and its members cannot stand behind the President while he undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers by importing Argentinian beef in an attempt to influence prices,” said NCBA CEO Colin Woodall. “It is imperative that President Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins let the cattle markets work.

“The U.S. already faces a deep trade imbalance with Argentina, one that is made worse by the President’s plan,” he continued. “During the past five years, Argentina has shipped beef valued at more than $800 million to the U.S., while purchasing only $7 million of U.S. beef. Furthermore, Argentina is a nation with a long history of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), and USDA has not completed the necessary steps to ensure Argentina can guarantee the safety of the products being shipped here, further endangering America’s cattle herd.

“If President Trump is truly an ally of America’s cattle producers, we call on him to abandon this effort to manipulate markets and focus instead on the promised New World screwworm facilities in Texas; making additional investments that protect the domestic cattle herd from foreign animal diseases such as FMD; and addressing regulatory burdens, such as delisting of the gray wolf and addressing the scourge of black vultures,” Woodall said, concluding the statement.

Your Next Read: Unpacking the Beef: Report Clarifies Cattle Market Realities, Packer Challenges & Trade Tensions