World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Slaughter Trends

Livestock slaughter weights have been diverging this year with cattle trending down and hogs trending up.

The heavier slaughter weights for hogs likely stem from packers trying to maintain margins by slowing slaughter rates and leaving them to be finished longer. Year-to-date hog slaughter is up 2.8 percent, but pork production is 3.6 percent higher due to the heavier slaughter weights. If those weight levels continue, pork production over the summer, a period when there is a usual seasonal decline, could maintain the year-to-date expansion pace. In the cattle and beef market, the same pattern of final product growth exceeding slaughter rates is playing out but not as dramatically. This is because cattle size is tailing off from the pea...

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