Week of August 29, 2026

The Week

The cutout has gone nowhere for two weeks, sitting near 376 cents with a softer Friday print, and grade is the reason. The Choice to Select spread collapsed to about 15 cents from 24 a week ago, so buyers stopped paying up for Choice just as the Labor Day orders finished shipping. Cash cattle gave up another $3.50, which is why packers made money anyway. Pork is the other half of this issue: the hog cutout has been sliding for a month and all of it came out of the cheap end.

Supply Picture

Packers are profitable on every plausible plant cost, roughly $56 to $206 a head, off a cattle-cutout spread of about $456. That is an improvement on last week, and the four-week average of about $309 is where the packer really stands: better than breakeven at a lean plant, thin at a heavy-cost one. Margins like that give him nothing to gain by lifting his bid, so cash keeps sliding and live cattle futures followed it down. The kill is doing nothing new.

Mexico reported 9 more screwworm cases in cattle this week and the Douglas crossing stayed open anyway, so the phased reopening has held through fresh detections so far. Those cattle are 2027 beef. If a case pulls the date back, it shows up in feeder futures long before it shows up in your boxes.

Demand Situation

The cutout is flat because the middles and the trim are moving opposite ways. Strip loin is up about 10% over four weeks and ribeye went with it, both carried by holiday buying that is now behind us.

The trim finally broke the other way, with heavy carcasses making plenty of it and heavy imports landing on the same end of the market. 50CL is down about 15% over four weeks and already sits under its usual level for late August. 65CL is down too and still sits 18% above its usual level.

None of the middles has repriced yet, top butt included, so the leverage this week is in the trim, not the loin. Chuck roll went the other direction, up about 13%, so buy chuck hand to mouth. Retail is rotating its beef space away from the middles and toward ground beef, which means the loin loses its shelf support from here.

Pork Market

The pork cutout is down about 4% over four weeks and the ham end took the whole hit: hams and picnics are each off about a tenth, while bellies and ribs barely moved. Under the primals the lean trim is where it hurts. 72% trim lost another 7% this week and sits a fifth under its usual level for this week, while the fat trim ran the other way and now prints over the lean.

The hog side gives no reason for it. Pork production is running a touch under a year ago, hogs are heavy, and pork packers are at breakeven, so this is a demand story on the lean end, not a supply flood, and retail is still featuring pork with loin ads up on the week. If you buy hams for the fall build, this is your window: roll-out hams and picnic meat are a quarter to a third under their usual level for this week, and that is leverage to use on the quote, not a floor to wait for.

Chicken Market

Football buying sits directly in front of wings, and they are already cheap for this point in the calendar after another 4.8% came out of them this week, near 117 cents. The chicken ad page thinned out badly, parts taking most of the cut, so features are not what pushed wings down, the selling is coming from the supply side and no price in front of you names the seller. Wing specs get covered for September from here; waiting for a cheaper spot once the season starts is the expensive way to find out.

Summary

The cutout went nowhere this week because the middles ran on holiday buying while the trim broke lower, and the Choice premium that was holding the loin up is gone. One call this week: strip loin is softer two weeks from now than the roughly $9.67 it printed Friday. The holiday buying is done, the ad page is rotating away from the middles, and buyers quit paying up for Choice. Trim, hams and wings are where the leverage sits, not calls: buy hams, stay hand to mouth on chuck, and let the strip come to you. We are wrong on the strip if the Choice to Select spread rebuilds next week and hands the middles their support back.