Australia: Cattle slaughter expected to fall in April

Several public holidays and less working days throughout April mean this month will have the lowest number of working days (17) since 2017, assuming processors are working a typical five-day working week with no Saturday kills. Due to the NLRS not reporting national kill numbers in 2017 (the last comparable year with 17 working days), analysis has been conducted to compare eastern states kill numbers instead. Cattle In April 2017, eastern states kill numbers totalled 430,549 head and slaughter for 2017 reached 7.16m head. This was 7%, or 496,000 head, above the 2023 slaughter forecasts of 6.66m head, suggesting that April 2023’s monthly slaughter will most likely remain below the April totals seen in 2017. In 2022, the weekly average kill rate for the four weeks of April was 83,492 head – a decline of 5% on the preceding four weeks in March. Kill numbers for the first four months of 2022 were significantly impacted by transport access, COVID-19 processing capacity issues and ...