U.S. Justice Department investigates beef pricing at Tyson Foods, Cargill, and JBS.

An unorthodox inquiry with real damage.

Beef prices are higher now than usual, and the price of beef rose faster than other grocery items. This is not the result of price-fixing or market collusion. It is the outcome of biology and market forces.

1. Beef is harder to produce than chicken. To raise a pound of chicken meat, a farmer needs to feed the chicken about 2 pounds of feed. To raise an equal amount of beef, the rancher might need to feed them 7 pounds of feed. If the price of feed increases by 25% (about the increase over the past five years), and feed was the only variable cost, the price of chicken could be up by 50% per pound, while that of beef could be up by 175%. That isn’t quite how it works; there are other variable costs, but it provides a worst-case scenario and points to the expected direction of relative price movement. Beef prices increase faster than chicken prices during inflation.
2. Cattle stock is down to its lowest level since 1951, currently at 86 million head. For comparison, the population of the U.S. was at 154 million in 1951. In 2026, our population reached 349 million. That is twice as many people, or roughly twice as much demand for beef, as there was in the 1950s. Economically, a higher demand for less beef would increase the price of beef dramatically. It takes a couple of years to increase herd size. There is no quick fix. Higher beef prices and less beef supply will persist for the near future.
3. It isn’t just about the U.S. cattle stock. The U.S. also used to process beef from Mexico. We stopped doing that due to an outbreak of the New World screwworm. We eradicated this pest in 1966 and stopped producing its vaccine decades ago. Panama still makes a vaccine. The New World screwworm re-entered Central and North America a few years ago, related to human trafficking from Venezuela to the free world. The New World screwworm rots the flesh off a cow. Rationally, the U.S. government halted imports of beef, which could carry this horrid disease. (Do you want to eat rotten flesh beef?)
4. U.S. meat packers have, after the increased efforts to reduce illegal immigration, had a harder time finding butchers to cut up cows. Naturally, this too raises prices.

This showmanship over rational policy will harm U.S. businesses and consumers. Higher beef prices at the grocer, on the commodity exchanges, and at the farmgate result from biological forces and free markets. It would be terribly unwise to try to overrule biology and economics.

To summarize some of the thoughts of the famed Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, “Can capitalism survive? No.” Not because it doesn’t work, nor because of a Marxist labor revolution, but because special interest groups will lobby to capture excess rewards and undermine the value of entrepreneurship.

For price managers in these industries, work with legal and beef up your compliance efforts. This farce can cause real and unnecessary damage.