Issue 1: October 2026

This is the first issue of the Beef Monitor. It is written for a restaurant, steakhouse, burger business or caterer facing a supplier's price claim on beef. It reports market evidence. It does not estimate any supplier's cost and draws no conclusion about any contract.

The read

Against a year earlier, the boxed beef cutout in recent weeks and retail beef prices are higher, while fed cattle prices and the producer price index for beef cuts are lower.

The Choice boxed beef cutout, USDA's composite value of boxed beef cuts from negotiated sales, was $374.70 per hundredweight in the week ending October 16, against $365.54 in the comparable week of 2025, 2.5% higher. Its four-week average, $376.95, is 2.3% higher. The Select cutout was $354.39, 1.3% higher, with its four-week average 1.6% higher. Across those four weeks the 2026 Choice cutout moved between $374.70 and $379.38 and finished below where it began, at $377.50, so the gain on the year reflects where last year's cutout stood in the same weeks, $368.63 on average, rather than a rise in these weeks. This issue's computed set compares only these four weeks with a year earlier; it does not show how earlier weeks compared.

Fed cattle prices are lower. The weighted average price of fed steers and heifers bought on a dressed basis, all grades together, was $358.22 in the report dated October 13, which covers the week ending Sunday, October 11, on 255,344 head. A year earlier it was $369.37, so the price is 3.0% lower; the report's own year-ago change, in the Datamart data this record reads, is −$11.15. On a live basis the price was $224.86, 3.8% lower. Both four-report averages are lower by more, 4.7% dressed and 4.5% live. The producer price index for slaughter cattle is 7.6% below September 2025.

Retail is higher, and the producer index for beef cuts is lower. The consumer price index for beef and veal is 3.5% above September 2025. The average retail price of all uncooked ground beef was $7.062 a pound, 6.3% higher, and of all uncooked beef steaks $12.690 a pound, 3.5% higher. The producer price index for beef primal and subprimal cuts made in slaughtering plants is 2.3% below September 2025, while the October cutout is above its year-earlier week; these are different measures for different months, and this issue's computed set holds no September cutout figure to set beside the index.

What these figures establish is narrow. Against a year earlier, the cutout in its latest four weeks, the beef consumer price index and both retail average prices are higher, so a claim that beef prices rose on the year can point to them; on the cutout the rise is 2.5% for Choice and 1.3% for Select. The producer price index for beef cuts, a September measure, is 2.3% lower, so the answer depends on which wholesale measure and which dates a claim uses. Every cattle measure in this issue is lower than a year earlier, so an increase explained by cattle costs higher than a year ago finds no support in them. Against September 2024 the picture is different: every monthly beef measure with a two-year comparison stands well above it, the slaughter cattle index by 20.4%, the beef cuts producer index by 29.8%, the beef consumer index by 18.7%, ground beef by 19.4% and steaks by 16.6%. The figures do not establish what happened to any particular supplier's costs.

The Choice cutout less the dressed fed cattle price was $17.98, both figures labelled per hundredweight in this record, pairing the cutout week ending October 9 with the cattle report dated October 13. That pair is a week older than the cutout headline above, because the cattle report whose week overlaps the cutout week ending October 16 had not published when this issue's data was collected. The difference has no prior-year figure in this record, and it is not a margin: the cutout counts Choice beef from negotiated sales only, the cattle price counts all grades and negotiated, formula, contract and grid purchases together, and neither is anyone's cost. The explanation sets out the differences.

The supply figures describe a smaller flow into feedlots. USDA's estimate of cattle on feed in feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head was 11,163 thousand head on September 1, 0.7% more than a year earlier, but placements during August were 1,617 thousand head, 9.2% fewer, and marketings 1,519 thousand head, 3.3% fewer. NASS says both August figures were the lowest for August since the series began in 1996. A head count is not a measure of how much beef is produced, and the record holds no measure of demand, imports, exports or cold storage, so it cannot say what drove any of these prices.

The numbers

Two-year comparisons, where the record allows them, against September 2024: slaughter cattle PPI +20.4%; beef primal and subprimal cuts PPI +29.8%; beef and veal CPI +18.7%; ground beef at retail +19.4% and beef steaks +16.6%; food away from home +7.3%. The weekly series and the cattle on feed figures carry none.

The explanation

Six kinds of measure appear above and they answer different questions. The cutout is a value USDA computes each week from negotiated sales of boxed beef cuts. The fed cattle price is a weighted average of what reported purchases of fed cattle paid in a week. The producer price indexes measure the selling prices received by domestic producers and exclude imports: one for cattle sold for slaughter, one for beef primal and subprimal cuts made in slaughtering plants. The two consumer price indexes measure the change in prices urban consumers pay: one for beef and veal at retail, one for meals and snacks bought away from home, which is not a restaurant's cost. The two average prices are retail prices per pound for two items. The NASS figures are counts of animals, not prices. None of them is a supplier's cost, and a movement in one does not fix a movement in another.

The cutout is narrower than the word "beef". Report 2461 states that it is "based on negotiated prices and volume of boxed beef cuts delivered within 0-21 days and on average industry cutting yields", in U.S. dollars per hundred pounds, and it lists the cuts behind it on an FOB plant basis, so freight to the buyer is not included. Choice and Select are separate columns, each headed 600-900; the report does not say what that range is measured in. The weekly figure is the report's weekly average, the simple average of the week's daily values, dated the last day of the week, here Friday, October 16. It counts negotiated sales only, not formula or contract sales, and it has columns for Choice and Select only, so it is not a value for Prime or ungraded beef. It is a computed value for a composite of cuts, not the price of any cut a kitchen orders: a strip loin, a chuck roll and ground beef each trade at their own prices in the same report. The pork cutout reported in Pork Monitor Issue 1 is a different kind of measure: one comprehensive value across all sales types and all delivery periods. The weekly Cattle and Beef Summary also prints a comprehensive boxed beef cutout, a different figure from this one; that report is retained and not parsed, so it contributes no figure here.

The fed cattle price is report 2700's weighted average for all steers and heifers of beef type, total of all grades: lots more than sixty-five percent Choice and lots less than sixty-five percent Choice taken together, so lots with less than sixty-five percent Choice are in it. Dressed and live are separate series, and dairy-bred cattle, which the report lists separately, are not in it. The record reads the report's Datamart JSON, which states no covered week and no purchase type. The report's PDF does. This record holds the PDF of a later report, dated October 27 and retained by the run of October 31, not of the October 13 report the figures come from; it heads the section "For week ending Sunday" and "Weekly Information from 2pm Previous Monday to 10am Current Monday; Includes Negotiated, Formula Nets, Contract Nets, & Grid Nets". It prints each price in dollars and states no weight basis. This record labels the price in dollars per hundredweight, a unit taken from its own source list rather than from either retained file. The date on each row is normally the day the report published, a Tuesday since March 31, 2026 and a Monday before that, not the end of the week it covers: the row dated October 13, 2026 covers the week ending Sunday, October 11, and the year-earlier row, dated Monday, October 13, 2025, covers the week ending Sunday, October 12, 2025.

The derived difference subtracts the dressed cattle price from the Choice cutout, $376.20 less $358.22. Because the cutout's week runs Monday to Friday and the cattle report's runs from Monday afternoon to the next Monday morning, each cutout week is paired with the cattle report dated the Tuesday after its Friday, whose week overlaps it: the cutout week ending Friday, October 9 with the report dated Tuesday, October 13. The report dated before that Friday covers purchases of the week before. The latest cutout week, ending October 16, has no cattle report to pair with in this issue, so the difference is a week older than the cutout headline. The two figures are not on the same terms: the cutout is Choice only and from negotiated boxed beef sales, while the cattle price covers all grades and negotiated, formula, contract and grid purchases; and neither retained report states that its figure is per hundred pounds of the same thing. The result is an arithmetic difference between two reported series. This record has no access to what it costs anyone to slaughter cattle and cut the carcass into boxes, so the difference is not a margin and says nothing about any packer's costs. It carries no prior-year figure here, so this issue cannot say whether it is wide or narrow by last year's standard.

The Choice less Select spread is a difference within one report, the same week: $20.31 in the week ending October 16, against $15.81 a year earlier. The report prints the same figure as its "Choice/Select Spread". The table shows its change as a percentage, 28.5%, but a percentage change on a difference is sensitive when the difference is small, so the two levels are the better read: Choice is further above Select than a year ago.

The retail measures moved more than the cutout. Ground beef at retail is 6.3% higher and beef steaks 3.5% higher, September on September; the Choice cutout is 2.5% higher, the week ending October 16 against October 17, 2025. The periods differ, and the record does not say which cuts either retail item comes from. These figures show what each series did, not how a cutout value passes into a retail price.

USDA's Food Price Outlook, in its update of September 25, 2026, puts beef and veal consumer prices 5.9% higher from August 2025 to August 2026, meats 3.6% higher, food away from home 3.4% higher and all food 2.7% higher. It gives forecast intervals for 2027 of −7.7% to 18.9% for beef and veal, −8.7% to 11.7% for meats, and 0.2% to 5.1% for food away from home. The beef and veal interval is wide and runs from a fall to a rise.

The uncertainty

This is the first issue of this title. It compares each series with the same period a year earlier and, where the record holds it, two years earlier. Month-to-month movement is not in this issue's computed set, except where the text quotes consecutive weekly values from it.

The weekly series do not share a week. The cutout headline is the week ending Friday, October 16. The fed cattle headline is the report dated Tuesday, October 13, covering the week ending Sunday, October 11. The cutout less cattle difference pairs the cutout week ending October 9 with that report, a week older than the cutout headline. Pork Monitor Issue 1 reports the pork cutout to the week ending October 9, a week behind the beef cutout here, so a reader setting the two side by side is comparing different weeks as well as different kinds of measure.

The fed cattle dates in this record are publication dates, not week endings. The covered week is the one ending the Sunday before the date shown. The 2025 rows were reloaded in the Datamart on March 24, 2026, so the record does not show when they first published or whether they are first prints; their covered week is inferred from the report's 2026 wording.

Report 2700 prints its prices in dollars with no weight basis; the per-hundredweight label is this record's, from its source list. The wording quoted for report 2700's coverage comes from the report of October 27, not the October 13 report the figures come from, and this record has no PDF of the earlier report to compare.

A year-over-year comparison for the weekly series is against the week nearest 52 weeks earlier, within four days. The cutout week ending October 16, 2026 is compared with the week ending October 17, 2025; the cattle report of October 13, 2026 with the report of October 13, 2025, which was published on a Monday and covers the week ending Sunday, October 12, 2025. The four-week figures are simple averages of four weekly values, each week counting equally. Weighting those weeks by the head or loads traded behind them could give a different number.

Mandatory price reporting covers trade at reporting plants. It is not every transaction in the country, and the negotiated sales behind the cutout are only part of the boxed beef trade.

The September producer price indexes are preliminary, and BLS may revise them for up to four months after first publication.

The cattle on feed figures are from the NASS release of September 18, 2026: the inventory on September 1, and placements and marketings during August. They cover feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head only. Outside January and July the survey covers feedlots in 16 States, and NASS says the previous month's estimates are subject to revision each month and reviews the previous year's in February, so the 2025 figures here are the ones the September 2026 release prints and may differ from what was first published. The record holds no 2024 reading, so these figures carry no two-year comparison. NASS and the Food Price Outlook have both issued newer releases since this issue's data was collected; later runs of this record retain them, and this issue reads the releases in its own run. The release's opening sentence counts "cattle and calves on feed"; its definitions describe steers and heifers fed for the slaughter market and expected to grade Select or better.

The two retail average prices are U.S. city averages for all uncooked ground beef and all uncooked beef steaks. They are what shoppers paid at retail, not a foodservice price and not a price for a particular cut, grade or pack.

The USDA Food Price Outlook figures are year-over-year from August 2025 to August 2026, not September to September, so its beef and veal figure, 5.9%, and this issue's September index change, 3.5%, cover different months. The forecast intervals are for 2027. They cover beef and veal, meats and food away from home as categories.

The cutout and the fed cattle price are USDA figures built from reported trade, not an offer available to any particular buyer, and a restaurant's delivered cost includes processing, freight and terms this record does not see.

The buyer's question

Ask the supplier three things before accepting a beef increase.

Which product and which basis: the cut, its grade (Prime, Choice, Select or ungraded), how it is trimmed and packed, and whether it is fresh or frozen. The cutout above is a composite value for Choice or for Select, built from cuts sold FOB plant, not the price of a case of any product, and in the latest week it was 2.5% higher than a year earlier for Choice and 1.3% higher for Select.

Which dates: the date the original quote priced from and the date the adjustment references. The Choice cutout went from $379.38 per hundredweight in the week ending October 2 to $374.70 in the week ending October 16. If the claim cites the cattle market, ask which report: a fed cattle report is dated the Tuesday it publishes and covers the week before.

Which series: the published series or supplier invoice behind the stated increase. Every series above is free and public. If the increase is put down to cattle costs, every cattle measure in this issue is lower than a year earlier: the dressed fed cattle price 3.0%, the live price 3.8% and the slaughter cattle producer index 7.6%. Against September 2024 the slaughter cattle index is 20.4% higher, so the comparison date the claim uses matters.

The record

Sources and retrieval. The issue's own run is 2026-10-18T145119Z, captured October 18, 2026. Reports 2461 and 2700 deliver their whole history in one request, so the weekly figures rest on that one run and no accumulated history. The coverage wording for report 2700 comes from its PDF retained by the later run 2026-10-31T013744Z, which supplies wording and no figure. Every capture behind this issue, with its retrieval time and SHA-256, is listed in evidence.json, the later PDF with the role "specification".

• USDA AMS National Weekly Boxed Beef Cutout and Boxed Beef Cuts, Negotiated Sales, report 2461 (LM_XB459), under mandatory price reporting: Choice and Select 600-900 weekly average cutout values in dollars per hundred pounds, FOB plant. Retained as the Datamart JSON and the printed PDF. Latest week ending October 16, 2026, published the same day.
• USDA AMS National Weekly Fed Cattle Comprehensive, report 2700, under mandatory price reporting: weighted average prices for steers and heifers of beef type, all grades, dressed and live, with head count and the report's own year-ago change. Retained as the Datamart JSON. Latest report dated October 13, 2026, for the week ending Sunday, October 11. The PDF of the report dated October 27, 2026 (LM_CT270) is retained from the run of October 31, for its wording only.
• USDA NASS, Cattle on Feed, released September 18, 2026 (cofd0926.txt): cattle on feed, placements and marketings for feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head, in thousands of head.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public API v2. PPI commodity indexes WPU0131 (slaughter cattle) and WPU02210133 (beef primal and subprimal cuts made in slaughtering plants); CPI-U CUUR0000SEFC (beef and veal) and CUUR0000SEFV (food away from home); average prices APU0000FC1101 (all uncooked ground beef) and APU0000FC3101 (all uncooked beef steaks). Not seasonally adjusted. Latest month September 2026.
• USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, CPI forecast table, update of September 25, 2026.
• USDA AMS National Weekly Cattle and Beef Summary, for the week ending October 9, 2026, published October 12: retained and not parsed, so it contributes no figure to this issue.

Method: every figure in this issue appears in numbers.json, regenerated from the data files by tools/issue.py. Capture files are hashed into an external timestamp chain anchored by RFC 3161 tokens from two timestamp authorities, which show they existed unchanged by the anchor date. An OpenTimestamps proof is stored for this edition's anchor; its Bitcoin attestation is collected by a later upgrade run. An external timestamp shows when a captured record existed. It does not show that a source's figure was correct or that a quoted price was available to every buyer.

Corrections: none. This issue is the first of this title.

Next issue: after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases October producer price indexes on November 13, 2026.