HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Thursday Margin Monitor, September twenty-fourth. From The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Everybody has an answer for making beef cheaper. I’m just not convinced everybody understands what it takes to put it on the dinner plate — especially in Washington. And hell, if that isn’t enough, I paid six forty-nine a gallon for diesel yesterday here in Oklahoma. Everybody wants affordable beef. Before Washington starts telling everybody how to make it cheaper, maybe we ought to appreciate what it takes to put it on the damn plate.

HOST: Southwest Kansas processing is under workforce uncertainty. USDA Wednesday cattle slaughter ninety-four thousand. Year-to-date down seven point six percent. How much of that is immigration enforcement is still unverified.

SHAWN: Sterling has feedlots at minus three twenty-four and packers at plus one thirty-nine. Domestic fresh nineties four ten FOB plant. Platts imported nineties three nineteen CIF East Coast. Ninety-one cents of quoted spread — not ninety-one cents of delivered savings. Hogs and Pigs is two p.m. Central. Pre-report near ninety-nine percent of year-ago. The BEEF Act would put Congress back over the three-hundred-thousand-ton window. It is not law.

HOST: All six pork primals lower. Chicken slaughter up one point one percent year-to-date. Crude ninety-two. Distillate inventories down twelve point seven percent.

SHAWN: The decisions still come down to supply, specification, delivered cost, and timing. Stay disciplined.

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Shawn Sparks, The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Stay disciplined.