I recently had the pleasure of engaging in a sit-down conversation with Randy Blach, chief executive officer of CattleFax, one of the many experts in the beef industry who bring a wealth of knowledge about the trends impacting the industry over the years.

Blach delivered his forecast for production trends relating to Certified Angus Beef. In a follow-up interview, I asked him a “wildcard” question: If you were to write a book, bringing all of that knowledge to bear, what would you call it and what would it be about? He thought about it for a minute or so before he answered.

“The product quality and safety of what we produce in the United States is second to none,” he said. “It is absolutely phenomenal, and the way our markets have continued to develop over time to where they send signals; they send signals to us, and they tell us what they want more of or want less of, and that we have mechanisms that those signals can be sent through with market pricing premiums and discounts — that has really been one of the greatest things I’ve seen in my nearly 50-year career in the industry.”

He went on to explain that for the first 20 years of his career in the beef industry, in the 1980s and ‘90s, all cattle were valued the same. There was no price difference between the very best cattle and worst cattle. Producers didn’t know what the consumer wanted in terms of beef quality, marbling and other attributes. The demand signal wasn’t reaching beef producers.

But what saved the US beef industry’s bacon was the markets’ embrace of value-based marketing concepts and the introduction of grid marketing into the system, Blach said.

And speaking of bacon, consumers are sending signals to pork producers that prices haven’t soured their taste for “meat candy.” For example, data from Circana OmniMarket Integrated Fresh, a Chicago-based market research firm, shows dollar sales of bacon at $6.8 billion for the 52 weeks ending Aug. 11, 2024, which was an increase of 1.6% compared to the year-ago period.

And dollar sales of frozen bacon jumped 53.4% to roughly $5.6 million for the 52 weeks ending Aug. 11, 2024, versus a year ago.

Consumers look to bacon as an affordable and versatile protein despite negative talk about the healthfulness of it and other processed meats. In reality, a food and drink research report by Mintel found that “… adults under 45 express interest not only in trial of specialty products, but also are open to discover ways to diversify occasions and applications suggesting that the benefits of convenient and affordable proteins still offset health concerns.”

So, not only are consumers not giving up or trading out bacon for other foods, they are demanding differentiation among products within the category. If the industry newswires are any indication, producers got that signal as bacons in new flavors, thicknesses and foodservice concoctions flourished this year.