Beef Brisket Cuts

Source: USDA AMS National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout, Negotiated Sales (LM_XB403). Click any row for the full chart, multi-year history, and seasonal context.

The brisket is the pectoral muscle primal off the front of the carcass, sitting low and forward of the chuck. Yield share is small, roughly 5 to 7 percent of carcass weight, and the primal is fabricated almost entirely into one dominant sub-primal: the deckle-off boneless brisket (IMPS 120), with a secondary point-off boneless variant (IMPS 120A). Most other brisket trim flows into the grind program rather than into named sub-primals. Brisket pricing is driven by BBQ demand. Texas-style smoked brisket programs, both at retail and in dedicated BBQ foodservice, anchor the demand side of this primal, and brisket consistently runs as one of the more seasonal beef cuts with summer grilling-season pulls firming the price into May and June. Brisket also trades closely with packer fabrication economics: when the packer can earn more grinding the brisket than fabricating it, fabrication slows and the boneless line tightens. Brisket prints daily in the USDA AMS National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout report (LM_XB403), generally as a single Choice line plus a Select line. Volume on brisket runs more concentrated than other primals because of how few sub-primal lines the primal carries.