WASHINGTON – The US Dept. of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is suspending the July Cattle report which was slated for release on July 22 and the US and Canadian Cattle report scheduled for Aug. 23. The decision to suspend these reports was budgetary, according a NASS release.

The Cattle report that is usually issued in July contains inventory numbers of all cattle and calves in the United States. The US and Canadian Cattle report is a combined report containing the number of cattle and calves by class and calf crop for both countries. Historically, the US and Canadian Cattle report has been a joint effort of Statistics Canada and NASS.

Most recently, NASS published the January Cattle report on Jan. 29 and will soon publish the US and Canadian Cattle report on March 8.

According to the NASS release, “Before deciding to suspend these reports, we reviewed our estimating programs against mission- and user-based criteria as well as the amount of time remaining in the fiscal year to meet our budget and program requirements while maintaining the strongest data in service to US agriculture. The decision to suspend this report was not made lightly, but was necessary, given our available fiscal and program resources. We will continue to review our federal agricultural statistical programs using the same criteria to ensure we provide timely, accurate and useful statistics.”

NASS is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about US agriculture.