Commodities Thursday, Feb. 26, 1987 : Livestock, Meat Futures Fall

Livestock and meat futures prices retreated Thursday with the onset of Lent and expectations that a study in a medical journal next week will weigh against the practice of giving animals antibiotics to stimulate growth.

On other markets, energy futures rallied, grain and soybean were mixed and livestock and meat were lower.

“Retail interest for beef products has cooled off,” said Chuck Levitt, an analyst in Chicago with Shearson Lehman Bros. “We’re going into the Lenten period and they don’t like to load up their inventories late in February into early March.”

So with retailers reluctant to do much buying, “packers are having some problems recovering the money they’ve been shelling out for live cattle,” Levitt said. “Wholesale beef was down a couple cents today and so packers aren’t making any money and this is taking a toll on the demand for live cattle.”

Also, he said, a negative background factor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is a research article to appear in next week’s New England Journal of Medicine. The article purportedly will trace the movement of antibiotic-resistant salmonella bacteria from livestock through the marketing chain to humans.