Agricultural Marketing Service

1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-0201

www.ams.usda.gov

An Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer

Organization Expectations for the Livestock Mandatory Reporting

Stakeholder Meetings

NAMI • Take learnings from these meetings back to the 

organization

NCBA • Report back to state affiliates

• State affiliates are currently creating policy

• Create overall policy as an organization based on state 

affiliate recommendations, share with group

ASI • Improve LMR for lamb to reflect industry structure

• Establish transparency in pricing as a shared goal among 

the working group

• Price reporting systems need to be flexible to be most 

effective

• Wants more specificity for confidentiality

• Lamb price reporting (mainly for direct live and carcass 

sales) is limited right now

• “The agency’s one-size-fits-all confidentiality guidelines and 

prejudice against cooperatives has negated the intent of 

the statute for lamb price reporting.”

• Wants baseline creative research to achieve 

confidentiality with the few facilities we have left

R-CALF • Agrees with ASI regarding confidentiality. Something needs 

to happen although it requires legislative action.

• There should be “real time disclosure of basis-type cattle 

procurement contracts and other forward purchasing 

arrangements not presently included”

• Require cash sales reporting at the time of negotiation for 

when delivery time is extended

• All after hours sales should be reported

• Forbid the practice of “folding ‘Tops’ trades (in which a 

premium is offered above the current cash market) into 

formula reports and require such sales to be a reportable 

cash sale.”

• Reporting from all regions

• Import or export numbers so that stakeholders know how 

much and know more about the buyer information

• Wants to see all of the import data disclosed, even though 

it may be an issue with confidentiality

CME Group • Cattle: 

o“AMS creates and publishes a 5-Area Daily Direct Slaughter 

Cattle Report – Formulated and Grid Purchases” report, 
Agricultural Marketing Service

1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-0201

www.ams.usda.gov

An Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer

daily rather than weekly”

o“AMS begin including dress yields in the daily 5- Area 

negotiated report and include them in the new 5-area 

formula report”

o “Negotiated trade in the daily 5-Area and National Reports 

should be 0-14 days only. 15-30 either should be broken out 

or not reported at all.”

o“maintain daily reporting – we cannot have only weekly” 

reporting

o“Long-term: MPR needs to be changed so that packers 

must report the day in which their base formula prices were 

establishes so that the USDA can report how old (or not 

old) the formula pricing data is.” 

• Hogs:

o“’Natural’ hogs – i.e.: gestation crate free, hormone free, 

etc. should be reported as negotiated and formula 

purchases and should not go into the ‘other purchases’ 

category as has recently been happening and is lowering 

the number of hogs eligible for the Lean Hog Index. This 

may require the industry to get minor changes pushed 

through in MPR but it is in their best interests to do so, 

because right now they’re going into the ‘other purchases’ 

category which is nothing more than a catch-all reporting 

category because the USDA doesn’t know what to do with 

it.”

o“‘Negotiated Formula’ should be removed as a separate 

category – it has very little volume and is reducing the size 

of our index because it’s confidential every single day and 

therefore decreasing price discovery, not benefiting it.”

• Pork and Beef Cutout

• “The packer surveys used to determine yield calculations in 

the cutout products should be mandatory. If they cannot 

be mandatory, then the USDA needs to commit to annual 

reviews of all their cutout calculation assumptions – such as 

yields – and update their calculations at a known date 

every year.”

U.S. Cattlemen • Create 2 co-chairs to move this process forward, worried 

that the group won’t have any true action steps moving 

forward

• Lack of consensus before, goal of reaching consensus
Agricultural Marketing Service

1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-0201

www.ams.usda.gov

An Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer

• Come up with something of substance

• Data is useful but doesn’t reflect marketplace trends

• Use this opportunity (baseline study and meetings)

• Present significant options to add to transparency and 

substantive issues

• Cattle committed for delivery function, 7-14-21 days out

LMA • Identify specific issue areas to report to leadership

• Share issues that come up before the next meeting

• Not a ton of policy on the books regarding MPR