Sort & Cull

Nine-Weight Carcasses Rock

John Harrington
By  John Harrington , DTN Livestock Analyst

Did you feel that? I swear, the floor moved and a few commemorative plates marking the anniversary of the Atkins Diet fell off the wall. It was definitely a seismic shift worthy of the San Andreas Fault.

With time and probable cause fully documented, I'm waiting for someone at the United States Geological Survey to return my annoying calls.

TIME: Approximately 10:58 a.m. CST, soon after USDA Market News released its weekly slaughter report confirming record fed carcass weights. For the week ending Oct. 25, steers averaged 902 pounds, 4 pounds greater than the prior week and 26 pounds heavier than 2013.

PROBABLE CAUSE: Boneyards full of once discounted cattle feeders spinning in their graves.

In the 1980s, "nine-weight carcass" was a four-letter word, at least according to the packer lexicon. Indeed, if you were randy enough to further spice your conversion with expletives like "yield grade 4," "excessive days on feed" and "overfat," the puritans at IBP could actually be seen blushing. (Or was it high blood pressure?)

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I can remember meetings where scolding cattle buyers would sternly lecture beef producers against the evil of oversized carcasses, monster slabs of meat that wouldn't fit in the box, required costly hours of trimming, and threatened the very structural integrity of packing house rails and walls.

And such finger wagging didn't stop with sermons of fire and brimstone. Wayward and misbegotten carcasses weighing 900 pounds or more quickly felt the wrath of severe discounts, sometimes as much as $25-$30 per cwt.

When the sorry check arrived in the mail, the guilty feedlot manager didn't have to be a born-again Baptist to get the message: GO AND SIN NO MORE.

My, oh my, how the world has changed. According to the official scale house, the nation's kill floors are nearly carpeted with nine-weight carcasses this fall with plant managers not whispering a word of protest. Keep in mind that the 902 pound steer "average" just reported implies that a good number in the slaughter mix no doubt measured a half ton or better.

Yet we hear virtually nothing about big carcasses being discounted. Indeed, federal inspectors haven't bothered to even measure yield grades for years. Not only does no one seem to care, record-high cattle prices would seem to imply the exact opposite: the bigger the better.

I suppose you could credit the fact that for all except a few dietary guerilla fighters, the once bloody war against fat is essentially over. Some might argue that more effective feedlot implants significantly raising the lean/fat production ratio have made bigger carcasses more economic. Still others will point to dropping feed costs.

These may be contributing factors, but my guess is that the biggest thumb on the scale stems from the awkward spread between limited on-feed population and real beef tonnage needs. When slaughter totals are down, the only way to compensate is by making carcasses larger.

Packers simply can't afford to seriously squawk about carcass size at this point in the game. Put another way, when it's midnight in the would-be land of cattle herd expansion, all cats look black.

For more of John's commentary, visit http://feelofthemarket.com/…

(AG)

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Comments

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Unknown
11/17/2014 | 6:26 PM CST
very good
robert shoemyer
11/14/2014 | 6:52 AM CST
I like your way of making things humerus as well as factual.