THERE’S been a dramatic decline in cattle slaughter evident in the latest weekly NLRS report issued today.

For the week ended Friday 3 July, national adult cattle slaughter dropped by 11,251 head, compared with the week before – a decline of more than 7 percent.

Last week’s national tally at 145,302 head is in fact the smallest for a non-holiday-impacted week since the middle of January, when the season was only just getting back on its feet after Christmas break.

Last week’s kill was some 7700 behind the same week last year (week 27) – the first time that year-on-year comparisons have been in negative territory (barring holiday impacts) all year.

Some of the most active processing states showed huge declines, with Queensland back 8235 week-on-week, and NSW back 2100 on the previous week, and a hefty 10pc behind the same week last year.

Victoria was less impacted dropping 708 head last week, but it is still 9.5pc behind the same level of production activity last year.  Other states showed smaller declines (see table).

Last week’s national kill was more than 21,000 behind the season high-week ended 22 May.

A number of micro and macro factors are involved, inquiries suggest.

China quota impact has been raised as an underlying reason, with imported meat markets under pressure in the United States and elsewhere as Australia has filled its China quota and Brazil is poised to do the same, funnelling more product into the US market.

US imported lean grinding beef prices are back 8pc on where they sat three months ago.

There’s also been a ‘moderately sized’ Queensland processor which has discontinued providing weekly kill data to NLRS, making direct comparisons with earlier weekly, monthly or yearly performance unreliable.

NLRS provided the following advice to stakeholders this afternoon, in the wake of the reporting change:

“As of the reporting week ending 5 July, a Queensland based beef processor has discontinued its contribution to the NLRS weekly slaughter report – please be aware of this for comparison across time. MLA relies on voluntary submissions from processing plants nationally.”

Currently its estimated that about 80pc of total national slaughter is captured in the NLRS weekly reporting data, with some processors in some states (Victoria and Queensland, especially) choosing not to contribute to the voluntary system. Disclosure of sensitive information has always been given as the reason.

The alternative is to wait for the more accurate ABS monthly slaughter data is issued, but that carries considerable lag.

The loss of one Queensland processor’s reporting numbers does not account for the large and consistent declines seen in other states, however.

Yesterday’s weekly kill report (compiled before latest data was available) discusses slow-downs being seen in southern states’ beef kills, due to seasonal decline in cattle availability and declining or negative margins.

The typical response has been less days worked per week (six to five, or five to four), or fewer cattle processed per shift, contacts suggested yesterday.

Some southern plants are also scheduling annual maintenance closures in coming weeks/months during the winter supply lull, but to Beef Central’s knowledge, that has not yet started.