The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) on July 25 published a new "Weekly Fed Cattle Comprehensive Report" and revised the "National Weekly Direct Slaughter Cattle - Prior Week Slaughter & Contract Purchases Report" through the Livestock Mandatory Reporting program.

“The cattle industry has seen a significant shift from traditional negotiated transactions to alternative marketing arrangements such as formula pricing,” USDA said. “The new 'Weekly Fed Cattle Comprehensive Report' reflects this trend by providing stakeholders a more complete picture of the cattle market in one convenient report.”

The "Weekly Fed Cattle Comprehensive Report" combines negotiated, formula net, forward contract net and negotiated grid net purchase information into a single weekly price series. The report highlights the price differences between beef-type and dairy-bred cattle and price differences between specific purchase types of transactions. Additional report sections provide the percentage of carcasses grading USDA Choice or higher, a quantity percentage breakdown of all purchase types and a daily head count distribution of formula base purchases.

Once published, the "Weekly Fed Cattle Comprehensive Report" can be found on the AMS webpage at National Direct Slaughter Cattle Reports.

Also effective July 25, 2017, section “D: BASIS DISTRIBUTION” of the "National Weekly Direct Slaughter Cattle - Prior Week Slaughter & Contract Purchases" report will be revised. The negotiated cattle delivering beyond 30 days will no longer be represented as forward contracts with a “0.00” basis level but instead will be identified with a blank basis level. This reporting change is in response to industry concerns of differentiating these types of purchases from other transactions.