Cattle Prices Fall Further

Cattle prices continued to plunge Tuesday on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as the contract for delivery in June fell to a new low price for the third consecutive day.

A glut of overweight animals is flooding the market with surplus beef, said Robert Saathoff, a livestock analyst in New York with Prudential-Bache Securities.

“It’s going to remain under pressure, and I don’t know where the bottom (price) is,” Saathoff said. June cattle settled at 63.20 cents a pound.

Beef carcasses on wholesale markets were lower, adding to the overall weakness in the beef market.

Hogs advanced despite weakness in wholesale prices for pork loins. Saathoff said meatpackers were eager to buy hogs Tuesday because farmers might be too busy preparing fields later in the week to market hogs.

He noted that sales of live animals on cash markets in country locations were lighter Tuesday than either a week ago or a year ago, and the slaughter this week is running about 5% below a year ago.