USDA’s monthly Cold Storage report was released on Monday, and it showed the 30 June red meat and poultry inventory at 2.392 billion pounds, 97.2 percent of the 31 May stocks but 104.7 percent of the 30 June 2018 total. Each species followed its typical monthly pattern for June: Chicken supplies in freezers remained flat, the turkey inventory was built up, and red meat stocks were drawn down. However, given the export problems faced by pork, those supplies were far higher versus June 2018, which was about the time that Mexican and Chinese tariffs hit U.S. exports. To underscore this point, approximately 27.5 percent of all the pork in storage consisted of hams, which were at 115 percent of last year. These are traditionally the top...

TAGS – Livestock, Asia, China, North America