Cattle slaughter falls 14% Friday as Kansas immigration raids keep workers home; boxed beef up 1.9% on week

Immigration agents spread across southwest Kansas this week, around Dodge City, Liberal and Garden City. The threat of arrest kept much of the beef industry's largely immigrant workforce at home, slowing slaughter plants and backing up cattle, Reuters reported, citing community organizers and three livestock producer groups. Two of the four big U.S. beef packers, National Beef and Cargill, run plants in Dodge City, and National Beef has another in Liberal. Kansas is second only to Nebraska in commercial cattle processing.

The Kansas Livestock Association, the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association and the Texas Cattle Feeders Association said in a joint statement that the disruptions "will lead to higher beef prices for consumers." National Beef said it was cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security "in an orderly way." DHS, ICE and the White House did not respond to Reuters.

USDA's numbers show more than the Thursday dip

Reuters cited USDA's estimate that packers slaughtered about 90,000 cattle on Thursday, down 16% from a week earlier. USDA's final daily slaughter report, released Friday, shows the slowdown was not a one-day event:

The week is running 13.3% below the same week last year, and cattle slaughter for the year to date is down 7.7%. Part of that is a supply story. U.S. herds are at a 75-year low after drought, and cattle imports from Mexico were suspended, Reuters noted. This week's drop on top of that trend is the labor shock.

The cash market shows it too. In USDA's five-area negotiated cattle report, only 9,283 head traded on Thursday, against 27,736 a week earlier, a drop of about two-thirds. Packers that cannot staff their lines have little reason to bid for more cattle, and Reuters said cattle futures "gyrated" as traders weighed tight supply against processing problems.

What reaches the kitchen

Less slaughter means less boxed beef, the wholesale product restaurants and grocers buy. USDA's afternoon cutout report put the Choice cutout at $378.83 per 100 pounds on Friday, up $2.71 on the day and up 1.9% from $371.94 a week earlier. The chuck primal, where much ground beef comes from, was at $334.83. That is a modest move so far. Beef prices were already at records, which is why the producer groups are warning about the next leg up.

605,380 independent restaurants are listed on CheckThisBiz, a directory of 7,704,724 independent US businesses, including 79,108 in CA, 54,058 in TX, 51,387 in NY. Chains and franchises are excluded from that count, so these are the owner-operated businesses that actually apply for funding.

A worked example: a burger restaurant spending $2,000 a week on beef would pay about $38 more a week, or roughly $2,000 a year, if the cutout's 1.9% weekly rise passed straight through. Distributor contracts, cuts and timing will differ. The bigger risk is not this week's move. It is whether slaughter stays depressed. If it does, lower output and record-high prices together make it hard to lock in a fixed price. It may be worth asking your distributor this week how long current quotes hold. See our restaurant playbook for cost planning, and our earlier story on Mexican cattle imports and ground beef prices.

Sources: Reuters; USDA AMS daily slaughter, 5-area negotiated cattle and boxed beef cutout reports (Sept. 25, 2026); business counts from CheckThisBiz. Percentages are our calculations from USDA figures; the worked example is illustrative. This is market information, not investment advice.