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HOST: Welcome to The Protein Pulse Podcast — your daily market update on all things protein. This is Thursday Margin Monitor for October 1, 2026, from The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: I never forgot something my Ag Econ 1114 instructor, the late Dr. Bob Ortman — God rest his soul — drilled into us at Oklahoma State. What is fundamental in economics? Scarcity. That’s exactly what has driven the cattle market. We don’t have enough cattle. Slaughter is down nearly 8 percent. The herd hasn’t rebuilt. Scarcity is real. But scarcity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. At some price, buyers adapt. Imports substitute for domestic lean. Chicken substitutes for beef. Pork competes for the plate. Grinders reformulate. Retailers change portions and packages. Fresh nineties are four oh nine while imported nineties are roughly a dollar cheaper. Chicken breast is around one twenty-one and the pork cutout is eighty-five cents. Now Brazil has effectively hit the wall in China just as additional U.S. quota opens. The cattle are still scarce. What’s changing is the value of the next scarce pound when the market has alternatives. Dr. Ortman would probably tell me that’s economics doing exactly what economics does.

HOST: Executive summary. Cattle slaughter is down seven point eight percent year to date, but fresh nineties have fallen to four oh nine. Imported lean remains sharply discounted to domestic product, while chicken and pork remain inexpensive alternatives. Brazil’s beef quota into China is exhausted, triggering an additional fifty-five percent tariff on above-quota shipments beginning today. At the same time, another one hundred thousand metric tons of U.S. other-countries quota capacity opens October first. Argentina’s separate fourth twenty-thousand-metric-ton tranche also opens today. USDA corn stocks surprised higher, sending December corn sharply lower, while diesel remains near five dollars a gallon.

SHAWN: The grind isn’t telling us Americans quit eating hamburgers. It’s telling us grinders don’t have to chase raw material the way they did this summer. USDA called lean boneless beef and trimmings sharply lower Wednesday. Fresh nineties averaged four oh nine on one hundred forty-four thousand seven hundred ninety-seven pounds of reported trade. Fresh fifties averaged eighty-one cents on four hundred seventy-four thousand five hundred ninety-seven pounds. Domestic fresh nineties were around four forty-nine only four weeks ago. Available ground-beef data don’t point to demand disappearing. Hales’ three-day average for eighty-one percent ground beef was approximately seven percent above last year, while year-to-date volume was nearly even with twenty twenty-five despite substantially lower fed-beef production. Imports, boneless inventories and cow supply are simply giving grinders more options.

HOST: Fewer cattle doesn’t mean fewer choices. Wednesday cattle slaughter totaled ninety-eight thousand head, bringing week-to-date slaughter to three hundred one thousand. Year to date, twenty point three oh three million head, down seven point eight percent. Choice closed at three eighty-three. Select at three sixty-one. The spread is twenty-two cents. USDA’s August cold-storage data put frozen beef stocks above four hundred seven million pounds, with boneless beef inventories higher than both July and last year. The U.S. can simultaneously have too few cattle and enough available beef to keep buyers from chasing price. Range and pasture conditions remain difficult, with fifty-one percent rated poor or very poor, versus thirty-five percent last year. The herd still needs rebuilding. Near-term beef availability doesn’t change that.

SHAWN: Chicken has what beef doesn’t: pounds. Boneless skinless breast meat is near one twenty-one, down roughly twenty-nine percent year over year. Wings are near five-ye