Who Are the 4 Major Beef Producers in the Usa

The Big Four Meatpackers

Related story: Cattlemen struggle against giant meatpackers and economic squeezes

About 35 meg cattle are slaughtered in the U.S. annually by lx major beef-packing operations processing around 26 billion pounds of beef. Four firms control over fourscore per centum of all the beefiness slaughtered.

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Tyson Foods Springdale, Ark.

Daily slaughter capacity 28,700

U.Due south. marketplace share 25 percent

Beef sales $12.seven billion

Visitor overview
Tyson bought the world'southward largest supplier of premium beef and pork products, IBP Inc., in 2001. It's the 2nd-largest pork and craven packer in the U.South. and sells its products in 90 countries.

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Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. Wichita, Kan.

Daily slaughter capacity 29,000

U.Southward. market share 21 percent

Beef sales Cargill Meat Solutions would not release this data. Its parent visitor, Cargill Inc., reported $88.iii billion in sales in 2009.

Company overview
Cargill Meat Solutions is i of 75 businesses under Cargill Inc., the largest privately-held corporation in the U.s.. Cargill runs the biggest flour-milling company in the world, is a leading corn syrup and soybean processor, and has cocoa and chocolate operations on iv continents. It employs 131,000 people in 66 countries, including Canada, Mexico and China.

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JBS United states Greeley, Colo.

Daily slaughter capacity 28,600

U.S. market share 18.five percent

Beef sales $ix.2 billion

Company overview
JBS The states bought Swift (the-tertiary largest packer) in 2007, then bought Smithfield (the fifth-largest packer and largest U.S. feedlot owner) in 2008, and then bought Pilgrim's Pride, the largest chicken processor, in 2009. The visitor tried to purchase National Beef Packing Co. in 2008, merely the U.South. Department of Justice opposed the acquisition. The parent visitor, Brazil-based JBS S.A., is the largest beefiness packer in the globe, with 54 processing plants on four continents.

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National Beef Packing Co., LLC Kansas Urban center, Mo.

Daily slaughter capacity 14,000

U.S. market share 10.5 per centum

Beef sales $5.4 billion

Company overview
National Beef started as a unmarried plant in Kansas in 1992. Its other main product is leather.

Sources: All numbers are for 2009. Slaughter capacity from "Feedstuffs" 2011 Reference Issue and Buyers Guide. Marketplace share and beefiness sales from A Value Chain Analysis of the U.Due south. Beef and Dairy Industries, Centre on Globalization Governance and Competitiveness, Duke University. Market place share numbers for the four companies add up to 75 percent in the Duke report, although the more normally used figure is 81 percent. Numbers differ due to varying sources used to collect this data, which is not reported past the USDA.