Activity in Argentina’s beef packing industry has fallen to its lowest level in ten years, according to a report from the meatpacking chamber CICCRA. During the first five months of 2026, slaughter totaled 4.944 million head, nearly 10% below the same period in 2025 and the lowest January-May figure since 2016, when 4.753 million head were processed.
A similar trend is evident in beef production. The 1.168 million tons of beef produced by 340 processing plants during the first five months of 2026 represented the lowest volume for the period since 2017, when output reached 1.128 million tons.
According to CICCRA, May slaughter, at just over 1 million head, was the ninth lowest May result in the past 47 years, “in a context dominated by reduced cattle availability for slaughter following a three-year liquidation phase of breeding females and overall herd inventories, driven by a succession of adverse weather events that began in 2022 and continued through mid-last year.”
