Fatty beef trim prices come back

Monday, October 7, 2013

The price of 50 per cent fat trim is making a comeback a little more than a year after a crisis hit the lean finely textured beef (LFTB) industry. Formerly, the fatty and lean ground products were combined to make the ground beef found in American grocery stores. When LFTB demand was wiped out following a series of controversial media reports, there was a glut of the fattier trim, but that glut seems to be over.

The reasons cited are an increase in the slaughter of dairy cows, compared to beef cows, as the beef herd shrank. Packers found other uses for the trimmings they formerly sold to now defunct Beef Products Inc. in North Dakota. Imports of lean beef from Oceania and South America are increasing. Flooding at the Cargill plant in Alberta and the E. coli scare at XL Foods both reduced beef sales from Canada. BF