What a year 2025 was, and what a year might lie ahead for the U.S. beef industry. I began writing about the industry in the fall of 1986 when I became the first journalist to write a detailed profile of IBP Inc., which eventually became the red meat arm of Tyson Foods. I began writing Cattle Buyers Weekly in December 1987 and have now entered my 39th year of following the industry and writing about it.
My observations during that time are numerous. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things that have particularly struck me. I quickly realized that there was a huge gulf between many cattle producers and those companies that bought and harvested their animals. From the start, I attempted to be an independent and impartial observer. But I was accused in the early years of being a “pawn of the packers.” That made me realize that some people didn’t even want to understand packers, even though they were essential for their survival.
Thank goodness this negative attitude gradually gave way to the realization that packers and producers needed to be partners not antagonists, and that they needed to work together to achieve the most important goal of improving beef’s eating quality and thus strengthening the demand for beef.
That the industry has reached those goals is, in my estimation, the most important advancement in the industry in the last 35 years. Whereas in the 1980s and early 1990s, one out of four steaks was tough; the industry today is producing all cuts of beef of a very high quality. During the same period, quality grading of carcasses has gone from below 50% Prime and Choice to a percentage that every week is just over 84%. That’s the best measurement I know of how quality has improved.
The other measurement is how Americans last year responded to record-high retail beef prices. Prices topped out last October, although the November All Fresh retail price at $9.40 per pound was still 16.6% higher than in November 2024. The Choice price at $10.08/lb. was up 21.2% on the prior year. Consumers seemed unconcerned about these prices, in large part because they saw the value equation. They realized that prices were high, but they were receiving even better-quality beef than ever before.
It was therefore extremely disheartening how the Trump administration last November tried to politicize the high beef prices. President Donald Trump on Nov. 7 claimed that meat companies were raising beef prices through collusion and price fixing, and called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate. None of his accusations have any merit. In fact, his accusations were far more spurious than other claims against packers in the past 35 years, all of which found no evidence of any wrongdoing by any packer. A new investigation would be a waste of the government’s time and would only cause packers to spend a lot of money on having to defend themselves.
Trump, as you may have read, asked the DOJ “to immediately begin an investigation into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that “we will always protect our American Ranchers, and they are being blamed for what is being done by Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply.”
Trump’s remarks were largely incorrect. No one blamed American ranchers for high beef prices. Second, two of the four largest beef packers, Tyson Foods and Cargill, are 100% U.S.-owned. JBS Beef North America is 100% owned by Brazil’s JBS SA, and National Beef Packing is majority-owned by Brazil’s Marfrig Global Foods. Third, claims that these four companies control 85% of the fed steer and heifer slaughter are incorrect. My market data over the past decade has put the percentage at or below 80%.
Trump further muddied the waters by vowing to bring in thousands of tons of Argentine beef, although he offered no explanation as to how he was going to do this. This, as you recall, caused howls of protests from the very ranchers he had earlier claimed to protect. Then he backtracked and removed the 50% tariff he had imposed earlier in 2025 on imports of Brazilian beef. That tariff shut off a vital supply of largely manufacturing beef to the U.S. market. Yet Trump took no responsibility for the impact this tariff had on U.S. beef prices.
The U. S. cattle and beef industry has long prided itself on being independent and protecting its interests against federal government interference. I urge it to continue to do this in 2026. It will certainly need to, as beef demand in 2026 will again exceed the supply of beef and keep consumer beef prices at record-high levels. The last thing the industry wants is a price freeze on beef such as President Richard Nixon imposed in the 1970s. — 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.)
