World Perspectives
livestock

Meat Packer Concentration – Again

We note that 11 state Attorneys General have asked the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) to investigate the anti-trust and price fixing implications of the high degree of concentration in the meat packing industry. This request was seconded by several members of Congress including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). We note this with some bemusement. Among all of the commercial sectors of the U.S. economy, meat packing has surely been the most investigated industry in history.   There is a very high level of concentration in the meat packing industry. Four companies, Tysons Foods, Cargill, JBS and National Beef, currently account for more than 80 percent of beef production in the U.S. Such large concentration in the hands of a few compani...

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livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins reversed sharply lower last week, swinging back into negative territory after six straight weeks of positive returns. Margins fell $145/head to –$75 as fed cattle prices rebounded $7/cwt (live basis), while the Choice cutout slipped nearly $7/cwt. The rapid compression...

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From WPI Consulting

Communicating importance of value-added products

Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.

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