Industry, academia and regulatory bodies agree on many points of the various forecasts for the next year and more regarding the meat and poultry industry, but each of their perspectives comes from a different view and different ideas of what the future might, or might not, hold.

Poultry Power

As of Dec. 16, 2024, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service’s (ERS) report “Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook: December 2024,” adjusted monthly by ERS, showed broiler production up by 75 million lbs for 2025 to 11,800 million lbs based on another month of elevated hatchery data which showed an increase of 3.4% year over year with 845.4 million broiler chicks hatched in October. Projected broiler meat in cold storage at the end of 2025 remained unchanged from last month’s projection at 790 million lbs. ERS reported broiler exports in October 2024 totaled 570.3 million lbs, down 43.6 million lbs from October 2023 but roughly even with Sept. 2024. ERS adjusted 2025 exports in December to correlate with its 2024 adjustments, and because it raised the 2025 production forecast. The new (Dec. 16, 2024) 2025 export projection 6,795 million lbs, is a nearly 1% increase from the 2024 projection.

Due to the increased production projections, ERS adjusted quarterly broiler pricing for 2025 down by 1¢ per lb in each of the first two quarters, from $1.30 to $1.29. Second half averages were adjusted back up by 1¢ to reflect seasonal trends and the raised projections on hog and cattle prices, giving the 2025 average price of broilers an unchanged forecast of $1.30 per lb.

“Poultry is still the leader from a consumption standpoint, and production and consumption when we look at it from a domestic point of view is still expected to tick up in the final forecast for 2024,” said Alex Stelzleni, professor in Meat Science, Muscle Biology and a graduate coordinator at the University of Georgia.

Pushing pork

The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) forecast world production of pork to decline in 2025 by .8% to 115.1 million tonnes as China’s and the European Union’s offset the United States’, Vietnam’s and Brazil’s production growth for next year.

Domestic production in the United States was forecast to grow by 2% in 2025 and reach 12.9 tonnes due to the increase in the number of animals slaughtered and an increase of the number of pigs per litter. Another contributing factor to the positive outlook is lower feed costs that are expected to support increased pig weights.

FAS also projected US pork exports to increase by 3.4% in 2025 to 3.4 mega-tons due to the ample domestic supply and strong competitiveness in export pricing. On Sept. 1, 2024, USDA showed the US hog inventory up 0.5% from the prior year. This included hogs kept for breeding being down 2.2% and hogs for slaughter up 0.7%. The lower breeding numbers will keep expansion of pork production low. Slaughter hog prices were projected to average $58 per cwt in 2025 with prices forecast to strengthen later in the year after a weak first quarter. Average per cwt pricing is down 3% next year from $59.80 in 2024 and down 1% from $58.59 per cwt in 2023.

Stelzleni’s specialty is beef, but he noted that forecasts coming from the USDA, or any entity that uses past and present factors for an analysis of future events, are constantly changing.

“Projections for 2025 are changing almost every week, every couple of weeks,” he said. “They come in and update them. There’s a lot of factors playing into that.”

Eyes on beef

The common feeling throughout the industry is that the future of beef is somewhat “fragile” right now. In the short term, cattle weights coming through the system will remain heavy, if not slightly increase, Stelzleni said. These signals indicate the industry will not see a rebuilding of the herd.

“I think we’re going to continue to see the herd decline and kind of maintain, hopefully a little bit, from the 2024-2025 projections,” he added. “We’re seeing more females going on to feed which is an indicator that folks aren’t quite ready to retain those females and put them back and go into expansion.”

Also, the stall of herd expansion might have something to do with the current price of cattle, and the prices forecast to go up. While prices might not go up as much as they have in the most recent past, as inventory goes down the heavier finished weights will most likely continue.

“Once that stabilizes, hopefully we’ll start to see some herd expansion come in,” Stelzleni said. “When we look at historical numbers, every time we’ve had a decrease in total inventory and we’ve gone into an expansion several years later, the expansion hardly ever comes back, or it takes a long time for that expansion to come back to any previous numbers. So, I think those signals for maintaining some heavier weight cattle will continue to be there for a little bit.”

One opportunity of note moving forward in the present climate is the local support of small and very small plants continuing to pop up and serve their immediate producers and communities.

“I think we’re possibly still seeing some growth in that area, not as strong as what it was immediately after COVID came, but we are still seeing some growth in that area,” Stelzleni said.

Collaboration

In terms of academia and industry working together to feed the world regardless of opportunities and challenges, Stelzleni said the relationship is a good partnership. While academia sometimes focuses on things that are more proof of concept that might not be implemented until further into the future in hopes of serving the public and industry later, it also works with industry to develop immediate solutions.

“We do work hand in hand on quite a few different projects, quite a few different technologies that are out there,” Stelzleni said. “And I think we’ll continue to see that, hopefully, continue and grow as we move forward.

Food safety tops the list as an umbrella project that academia and industry continually work on together. The two entities are currently looking at some newer food safety technologies that are outside of what would be called “chemical in nature.” These food safety products could be used to address existing food safety issues while maintaining or improving overall quality and shelf life.

“If we can go to something that’s more clean label, for lack of better word, even though the interventions, depending where they’re placed, don’t have to go on the label,” Stelzleni said. “It’s good to look at things that are more environmentally friendly, more worker friendly, more plant friendly, more economical, those are some of the things at the forefront.”

Also, academia and industry currently work collaboratively on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to look at prediction models to use for sorting, classifying and categorizing product.

“Whether it’s yields, qualities, or percent lean basis, is there a way in which we can use some of the automation and AI to scan, predict and sort some of the carcasses and cuts. coming out,” Stelzleni said. “Some of that’s being done right now as well.”