(Alice McFarlane/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Cattle Markets

Livestock markets shaken by Tyson plant fire

Aug 23, 2019 | 12:10 PM

A fire at a Tyson beef packing plant in Kansas is having an impact on the entire North American livestock industry.

The fire partly destroyed the plant on Aug. 9 and Tyson announced it would be shut down indefinitely.

Saskatchewan Livestock Economist Brad Marceniuk said the plant closure is significant.

“The big news in the industry this week was the fire at the Tyson slaughter plant in Kansas, which removed 30,000 to 35,000 weekly cattle slaughter capacity in the U.S., which represents five to six per cent of U.S. slaughter capacity,” Marceniuk said. “That provided a lot of concern in the sense that there would be more slaughter animals coming to market without the capacity.”

Marceniuk said the effects of the fire are far reaching.

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“Both U.S. cattle future markets and fed cattle markets were significantly lower last week on these concerns with live cattle future prices declining seven to eight per cent,” Marceniuk said. “We did see on the positive side that U.S. beef cutout values did jump 6.7 per cent last week to average $230.43 per hundred weight (CWT).”

Meanwhile, Saskatchewan feeder cattle prices have been trending upward this summer. Marceniuk said cattle prices have gone up since spring but remain below last summer’s price levels.

“We did see some prices earlier in the summer down with some uncertainty with feed supplies with early spring dry conditions in Saskatchewan, which initially put pressure on cattle prices. But, we did see prices kind of rebound here in the last month and that’s really because of the strong North American beef demand as we did see prices higher with strong beef cutout values.” Marceniuk said.

Canfax reported weekly marketings of roughly 1,800 head of cattle sold in Saskatchewan last week. That was up from 1,538 head marketed a week ago.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF