The Cattle Business Weekly
For cattlemen, by cattlemen is this podcast bringing you the latest in cattle industry headlines straight from the news desk of The Cattle Business Weekly in South Dakota. It's a dose of what's happening in markets, on the ranch and in Washington, D.C. It's news about everything that impacts a cattle operation's bottomline (aka profit). Listen to us in the feed truck, on the way to a cattle sale or on the porch with a beer! We promise you won't go away without having learned something.
The Cattle Business Weekly
U.S. Beef Packing Industry Structure
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In 2025, total cattle slaughter was 29.252 million head, down 6.4 percent year over year and down 13.1 percent from the recent cyclical peak in 2022. Cattle slaughter in 2025 was at the lowest level since 2015. Table 1 shows the breakdown of 2025 cattle slaughter by size categories of beef packing plants. This includes both fed and cow slaughter plants. Out of a total of 937 federally inspected packing plants, 94.8 percent (888 plants with capacity up to 100,000 head per year) accounted for 1.92 million head, 7.14 percent of total slaughter. By contrast, a...