Meatpacking facilities have continued to recover weekday slaughter capacity and have used Saturday as an opportunity to improve overall weekly slaughter totals.

The U.S. is on track for record production of beef, pork and broilers in 2020. Before COVID-19, it was recognized that meat trade would be critical for markets in 2020 and that certainly remains true at this point.

U.S. beef trade continues to adjust to supply and demand shocks. The latest data release from the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) shows the impact of these shocks on U.S beef exports and imports.

Over the past two months at the time of this writing, U.S. beef packers had to implement new health protocols for dealing with COVID-19 that might have hindered their ability to process cattle.

In first-quarter 2020, beef production reached record levels on the largest number of cattle slaughtered for the quarter since 2002 and the heaviest dressed weights since 2016.

The spread of COVID-19 has caused shifts in the beef demand structure; coupled with global economic uncertainty, it is affecting the entire beef supply chain.

The 2020 beef production forecast for 2020 was raised by 240 million pounds to 27.7 billion pounds from the previous month. This increase is based on the pace of fed cattle slaughter and heavier expected cattle dressed weights.

The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released its semiannual Cattle report on Jan. 31. The total number of cattle and calves on Jan. 1, 2020, was estimated at 94.4 million head, nearly 400,000 head lower than the previous year.

Beef exports posted more modest growth in January, increasing 2.5% from a year ago in volume (107,374 metric tons [MT]) and 5% in value ($672.7 million). But beef muscle cut exports were the highest ever for the month of January at 81,342 MT, up 4% from a year ago, while muscle cut value increased 5% to $589.2 million.