There is no daily Prime print and no Prime cutout. The Choice and Select cutouts come out every afternoon on LM_XB403. Prime boxed beef gets one report a week, LM_XB456, "National Weekly Boxed Beef Cuts for Prime Product, Negotiated Sales", posted Monday morning for the week just ended. A buyer who wants to know what Prime ribeyes traded for has to wait for Monday, and even then gets a weighted average over the whole week, not a day.
That is the first thing to understand about the report: it is a weekly summary of a thin market, built from mandatory packer reports under Livestock Mandatory Reporting, the same system that feeds the daily Choice report.
What the report carries
Three sections. A summary header, a current volume line, and the Prime Cuts table. The table is the report. It lists about twenty items with the week's trade count, pounds, low, high and weighted average per hundredweight:
| IMPS | Item on the report |
|---|---|
| 109E | Rib, ribeye, lip-on, bone-in |
| 112A | Rib, ribeye, boneless, heavy and light |
| 116A | Chuck roll, 1x1, neck off |
| 120 | Brisket, deckle-off, boneless |
| 123A | Short plate, short rib |
| 171C | Round, eye of round |
| 174 | Short loin, 0x1 and 2x3 |
| 175, 180 | Strip loin, 1x1 bone-in and 0x1 boneless |
| 184, 184B | Top butt, boneless and center-cut |
| 185A, 185D | Bottom sirloin flap and peeled tri-tip |
| 189A, 191A | Tenderloin trimmed heavy, and butt tender |
Notice what is missing. One round item, one chuck item, no trim, no ground beef, no cutout line. Prime is a middle-meat market: ribs, strips and tenderloins carry the volume, and the end meats mostly get sold as Choice or branded product because the Prime label is worth little on a chuck roll. The report reflects that.
A companion, LM_XB456A, carries the same items for formula and forward-contract sales. The negotiated report is the one quoted, because negotiated trades are the ones that found a price that week.
How thin it is
The current volume line tells the story. The whole Prime week runs about 1.7 to 2 million pounds, roughly 45 loads. The daily Choice report prints that many loads on a quiet afternoon. Across 2024 to 2026 the weekly Prime volume has sat a little above 1.7 million pounds at the median.
USDA's separate weekly grade breakdown (report 2465) puts Prime at about 4% of the boxed beef loads that trade, with the 2026 weeks running near 4.4% against 3.7% in 2025, and a range since March 2025 of roughly 3% to 5.5%. That is the share of boxed beef trade, not the share of cattle grading Prime at the rail, which is a different and larger number.
Thin has consequences on the page. Lines go blank in weeks when too few packers traded an item for USDA's confidentiality rule to allow a print. The short loin 2x3 and the butt tender often show a handful of trades. A weighted average built on three trades is a quote, not a market. Read the trade count before the price, every line, every week.
The Prime premium, cut by cut
The useful number is not the Prime price. It is the gap over Choice, because Choice prints daily and Prime does not: a buyer who knows the usual premium can price Prime off today's Choice print without waiting for Monday. Measuring each week's Prime weighted average against the same week's average Choice print, 2024 to 2026:
| Cut | Prime over Choice, median week | Usual range |
|---|---|---|
| Bone-in ribeye 109E | +29% | +16% to +44% |
| Strip loin 0x1 180 | +23% | +8% to +83% |
| Boneless ribeye heavy 112A | +21% | +4% to +35% |
| Tenderloin 189A | +18% | +5% to +37% |
| Bottom sirloin flap 185A | +14% | +6% to +27% |
| Brisket 120 | +13% | +5% to +27% |
| Top butt boneless 184 | +12% | +4% to +30% |
| Chuck roll 116A | +4% | 0% to +9% |
The ranking is the point. The premium is a middle-meat premium. A Prime chuck roll is nearly a Choice chuck roll with a different sticker, and the market prices it that way. The strip has the widest range of all, which says the strip premium is the one that moves with the calendar and with how many Prime strips the packers have to sell that week.
When the premium is wide and when it is narrow
The premium is not constant through the year, and it does not peak where people expect. The ribeye and tenderloin premiums over Choice have been widest in January in the 2024 to 2026 prints, not December. December is when Choice ribeyes and tenderloins are bid for the holidays, so Choice closes the gap; in January the Choice print falls away faster than Prime does and the gap opens again. The ribeye premium has been narrowest in May, the tenderloin premium in August, when Choice middle meats carry a grilling bid of their own. The strip and brisket premiums have run widest in September.
So a buyer quoting Prime off the Choice print needs the month, not just the median. A premium that looks rich in December is normal in January.
Reading it as a buyer
Monday morning, three passes. First, the volume line: a week well under 40 loads is a week where every price on the page carries less weight. Second, the trade counts on the lines you buy: a ribeye line on 100 trades is a market, a tri-tip line on 15 is a reference. Third, the premium over last week's Choice average for the same cut, against the table above and the month you are in. If the Prime strip is 60% over Choice in a week when the usual is 23%, either Prime strips were short or Choice strips were long, and the daily Choice report will tell you which within a day or two.
Meat Read's live pages carry the Choice and Select daily prints the premiums above are measured against, so the gap can be read any day of the week, not only on Monday.