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Demand is key as livestock slaughter totals rise

US livestock slaughter totals have been on the rise and a market analyst says it won’t slow down anytime soon.

Scott Brown, with the University of Missouri, says last week’s combined beef and pork production was the 7th highest total ever.  “When you look at beef production for the week, 526 million pounds of beef produced – that’s the second highest weekly beef production since June 2011,” he says.  “Look at the pork side – we were producing about 506 million pounds of pork in the last week.”

Only six other weeks have had more production, and all of them fell between mid-October and mid-December last year.

On Tuesday of this week, the USDA estimated hog slaughter at 455,000 head – a new daily record.  As those numbers continue to increase, Brown says demand is going to be key to price support.  “Let’s hope for really strong demand through the last several weeks of the year,” he says.  “We’re going to need it as we push pretty large supplies out there.  That demand is both domestic and international and we’ll look at both sides of that picture as we round out 2017.”

He tells Brownfield the new pork processing plants that came online earlier this month should help prevent significant pressure to US hog prices in the last quarter of the year.  While they aren’t operating at full speed, he says the additional shackle space will reduce the likelihood that the anticipated large hog numbers will exceed US slaughter capacity.