Demand for high-quality beef persists. But with that demand comes challenges. From tight cattle supplies to higher costs and increasing pressure on retailers to deliver a consistent eating experience, the pressure is on.
At the 2025 Feeding Quality Forum, David O’Diam, vice president of retail for Certified Angus Beef (CAB), addressed the current retail beef environment, highlighting both opportunities and challenges in today’s marketplace.
O’Diam noted that while cattle numbers are down, beef quality has held steady, providing an important foundation for retailers to merchandise CAB.
“While there’s less overall total fed cattle, the quality in this herd is outstanding,” O’Diam said.
Even with tighter supplies, retailers can still count on enough high-quality beef to sell. And that’s a good thing.
Beyond supply, the dollars and cents are front of mind, too. Prices have shifted significantly in recent years. Following the pandemic disruptions of 2020, and shifting economy, consumers are still absorbing increasing prices. Since COVID-19, carcass values have increased by more than $1,500 on the box side.
As prices rise, consistency becomes even more critical to ensuring consumer satisfaction and customers at the meat counter.
“One of the most detrimental things that can happen to our industry is having a bad eating experience when beef is this expensive,” O’Diam said. “That would be more detrimental to our industry than high prices of high quality.”
At the end-user level, Certified Angus Beef ® brand product offers a repeatable eating experience that protects consumer trust. That consistency is especially important during key promotional periods, when retailers move tremendous volumes of beef. O’Diam explained how weekly features can quickly multiply into large-scale demand.
“Seventy percent of their volume on a weekly basis comes from that front page feature. If it generates a million pounds, that’s about 25 truckloads. It’s about 2,500 or 3,000 head of cattle in one week.”
Such promotions create constant pressure to secure product in advance. The environment in which the CAB sales and product services teams interact with partners has changed. Conversations center on current supply dynamics and how beef buyers can navigate them to ensure they have beef available for heavier sales periods.
But what about the other animal proteins? Even in the face of competition from pork and poultry, O’Diam said demand for premium beef remains strong. That demand exists because Angus ranchers have built it, delivering a quality product time and again that keeps consumers coming back.
“We are up as a retail division in light of the smallest cattle herd and in light of the highest prices ever. This is the demand that this room has created.”
Momentum continues to lean toward premium beef.
“There’s more demand for [Prime] product than what we have available,” O’Diam said. “It’s item specific and there’s a lot of caveats to it, but the reality is we are demanding more Prime today than ever before and selling it specifically at retail.”
For Angus ranchers, the path forward is clear: continue targeting CAB and pushing for Prime.
