Meat & Livestock Australia’s full suite of cattle and sheep market indicators will return from tomorrow, 3 June, after being suspended since March due to COVID-19 disruptions to market reporting.

The return of the indicators follows MLA’s Livestock Market Officers resuming physical market reporting at all saleyards covered by the indicators.

If COVID-19 disrupts market reporting again, the indicators will again be suspended. If there are local disruptions, there may be instances where a full saleyard report is not available, MLA advised this morning.

Impact on reporting

From 3 June, the full suite of MLA’s market reporting will resume:

• Full versions of physical cattle, store cattle and sheep saleyard reports will be available, including muscle score, fat score, estimated carcase weight, estimated dressing percentage and skin values.
• Cattle and sheep indicators will return: the Eastern Young Cattle Indicator, National Trade Lamb Indicator and the indicator charts/tools/values will be updated. The EYCI Daily Summary report, Eastern States Daily Indicator report and Comprehensive Indicator report will also resume.
• MLA will continue to publish the temporary CV19 cattle and CV19 sheep market indicators but will regularly review this in line with the broader operating environment.

Actions will seek to restore missing livestock indicator data

MLA is currently working on a method to close the missing data series of livestock indicators caused by COVID-19 related disruptions to market reporting between March and June 2020.

The replacement data will undergo a comprehensive and rigorous assessment using historical data before being publicly released. A replacement to the missing data will enable the industry to examine livestock price trends and complete future market analysis without any missing data periods.

MLA said it will advise if and when this data is available.