During CattleCon 2025, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays caught up with the president and CEO of the United States Meat Export Federation, Dan Halstrom, and talked about the U.S. beef export market of today.
Coverage of CattleCon 2025 is powered by Farm Data Services of Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Halstrom noted that while the Trump Administration’s talk of tariffs is noteworthy, the cattle industry needs to hang tight and focus on things it can control – the record-high beef demand being one.
“Demand, globally, for U.S. beef and pork is record-breaking,” he said. “Especially when you look at the beef side with the shorter supplies and extremely high prices. Given all of the headwinds, we’ve got a strong U.S. dollar, uncertainty of what might or might not happen with tariffs, but despite all of that, demand is good, so we are fairly optimistic.”
Halstrom contributed the strong demand for U.S. beef across the world to its reputation as the safest supply source in the world in not only meat quality but also animal health. Also, the extremely marbled, grain-fed beef is a unique product in many foreign markets. He added that the global expansion of middle-class populations across the globe is also bolstering the demand and the ability of consumers to pay for the quality of U.S. beef.
“It’s about selling a whole carcass,” Halstrom said. “So, beef and pork variety meats are center of the plate items in a lot of these countries. A chilled beef tongue in Japan brings over ten dollars a pound wholesale at the packer level. If it was sold here in the U.S., without a doubt, it would be under a dollar. Tripe is another good example – three dollars a pound versus, maybe, fifty cents. So it is about putting the right cut in the right place to maximize the value.”
New muscle cuts such as trimmed clod hearts, chuck tenders, and rounds, are finding more value in foreign markets as well.
“These buyers are very sophisticated in understanding that there is a supply constraint at the moment, so they are looking for other alternatives,’ Halstrom explained. “This will pay off two or three years down the road. When you start to see the volumes expand, we are going to have other tools in the toolbox that they can benefit from.”
He said that the tenderness and unique flavor of U.S. beef is a recipe for success on the global scale.
Potential challenges that Halstrom fears the most include any type of animal health scare on U.S. soil such as foot and mouth disease or African Swine Fever. He said, “These sorts of things would not only be devastating domestically, but they would also devastate market access internationally, but the beef and pork industries are very focused on that.”
Uncertainties in the market also keep him up at night, but the Trump administration’s devotion to agriculture gives him confidence.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
