Cattle Drop as Grocers Slow Labor Day Beef Buying; Hogs Rise

Cattle futures fell to a seven-week low on speculation that grocers have finished stocking up on beef before the U.S. Labor Day holiday. Hogs rose.

Meatpackers shipped 16.97 million pounds (7,697 metric tons) of choice beef last week, the smallest amount since the week ended Jan. 2, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Retailers may have slowed buying after earlier filling their freezers in preparation for the Sept. 7 holiday, when many consumers grill outdoors. The price of wholesale choice beef is down 0.2 percent since reaching a three-month high on Aug. 26.

“We’ve done a lot of beef business in the last couple of weeks coming into the long holiday weekend,” said Troy Vetterkind, the owner of Vetterkind Cattle Brokerage in Chicago. “With Labor Day, you expect business to slow down a little bit, and it was doing that toward the end of last week.”