THE PROTEIN PULSE — DRIVE TIME Closing Bell Friday | October 9th, 2026

We spend a lot of time talking about cattle numbers, plant capacity, and margins.

Those numbers matter, but none of it works without the people showing every day to keep these plants running.

Recent immigration enforcement in Southwest Kansas disrupted staffing and cattle movements in an already strained beef supply chain.

We can debate immigration policy all day, but we still have to keep the plants running.

You can't build a dependable protein supply chain with an undependable workforce.

Year-to-date cattle slaughter is twenty point nine eight million head, down seven point five percent.

Thursday was one hundred one thousand head.

Choice fell seventy-seven cents to three seventy-four eighty-five.

Select fell two forty-eight to three fifty-one seventy-three.

The spread widened to twenty-three twelve.

Imported beef trimmings jumped eighty-five percent from last year to twenty thousand nine hundred metric tons.

Australia was forty-one percent of that.

Imported frozen nineties assessed at three nineteen, CIF East Coast and three oh five, FCA, against domestic fresh nineties around four oh two.

Those are not interchangeable.

More imported lean can still change the blend even while cattle stay scarce.

We spend a lot of time talking about cattle numbers, plant capacity, and margins.

Those numbers matter, but none of it works without the people showing every day to keep these plants running.

Recent immigration enforcement in Southwest Kansas disrupted staffing and cattle movements in an already strained beef supply chain.

We can debate immigration policy all day, but we still have to keep the plants running.

You can't build a dependable protein supply chain with an undependable workforce.

Year-to-date cattle slaughter is twenty point nine eight million head, down seven point five percent.

Thursday was one hundred one thousand head.

Choice fell seventy-seven cents to three seventy-four eighty-five.

Select fell two forty-eight to three fifty-one seventy-three.

The spread widened to twenty-three twelve.

Imported beef trimmings jumped eighty-five percent from last year to twenty thousand nine hundred metric tons.

Australia was forty-one percent of that.

Imported frozen nineties assessed at three nineteen, CIF East Coast and three oh five, FCA, against domestic fresh nineties around four oh two.

Those are not interchangeable.

More imported lean can still change the blend even while cattle stay scarce.