Walk around any neighborhood in Denver, or any other city in the U.S. for that matter, and you will hear and smell steaks and hamburgers sizzling on the grill. Yes, it’s the start of the annual grilling season when most Americans partake in their favorite food pastime. The U.S. beef complex relies on the grilling season as May and June are the two strongest months of the year for beef demand.
However, consumers face record-high or near record-high beef prices in the grocery store and on most restaurant menus. Weekend retail meat sales remain slow, a victim of higher energy prices and overall uncertainty by consumers in the current chaotic economic environment, noted analyst Bob Wilson, HedgersEdge.com, in early April.
February is the weakest demand month for beef at retail, but prices ignored this fact by setting new all-time highs during the month. USDA’s All Fresh Beef retail price averaged a record $9.64 per pound, which was $0.17 higher than January’s average and $1.32 or 16% higher than in February 2025. The Choice beef price averaged $10.12/lb., versus $9.93/lb. in January and $8.64/lb. in February 2025. The All Fresh Beef price beat the old record of $9.55/lb. set last December, while the Choice price beat the previous record of $10.08/lb. set last November and December.
The records suggest that retailers increased their prices in February rather than featured beef more aggressively to boost sales volumes. The price for ground beef also set a new record in February, averaging $6.90/lb., which was up $0.93 or 16% from the previous year. Roasts averaged $8.93/lb. in February, up $0.93 or 12% from last year. Steaks averaged $14.14/lb., an increase of $2.29 or 19% from last year and were the second highest on record behind August 2025 at $14.32/lb.
Conversely, the average retail pork price in February was $4.90/lb., which was up only 5 cents from January and up only 6 cents from February last year. Since January 2025, the retail pork price has averaged $4.94/lb. The February retail composite broiler price was $2.39/lb., up a penny from January but the same price as in February 2025. The broiler price has been on a gradual decline since June 2025 when it was $2.49/lb., say analysts.
Consumers remain the key to continued strength for the beef market, says Wilson. February retail sales rebounded according to the Commerce Department’s latest report, posting a 0.6% increase from January when the number was slightly negative. But these sales numbers did not reflect the impact of the military action and war with Iran that began the last day of February. Luxury and high-priced choices are becoming more difficult to justify. As a caution in this environment, the beef to pork cutout ratio has moved to an all-time high level, he says. Other analysts say there has been some trading down in beef purchases this year to pork and chicken because of price but that the demand for high quality cuts remains strong.
Meanwhile, meat and poultry sales should get a boost this year as meat and poultry now sits in the center of the food conversation around the U.S. This follows the release in January of the new food pyramid as part of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030. Meat takes a prominent place in the pyramid, and one of the reasons for that is the advocacy work carried out by the Meat Institute, the U.S. meat and poultry industry’s major trade association. The Institute says it has been in conversation for the past year with the federal government and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about positioning meat and animal protein front and center in people’s lives.
Julie Anna Potts, the Meat Institute’s president and CEO, discussed how the trade association worked with Kennedy, invited him to share his perspective at the 2026 Annual Meat Conference and collaborated to get the message of meat out across the country. As the Make America Healthy Again movement continued to broaden, Potts and the Institute saw it as an opportunity to positively promote meat’s many attributes.
“When he became the standard bearer for changing the dialogue on health through what you eat, we thought, this is a great opportunity for meat and poultry to be recognized as the nutrient-dense products that they are,” Potts said after interviewing Kennedy during the Annual Meat Conference. In other words, many years of advocacy on behalf of meat’s attributes might finally be paying off. — Steve Kay, WLJ columnist
(Steve Kay is editor/publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, an industry newsletter published at P.O. Box 2533, Petaluma, CA, 94953; 707-765-1725. Kay’s Korner appears exclusively in WLJ.)
