ASB Notice: NASS Suspends July Cattle and the August US and Canadian Cattle Reports

The U.S. Department 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 U.S. and Canadian Cattle report scheduled for August 23.

The Cattle report issued in July contains inventory numbers of all cattle and calves in the United States. The U.S. and Canadian Cattle report is a joint effort of Statistics Canada and NASS to report the number of cattle and calves by class and calf crop for both countries within one publication.

NASS published the January Cattle report on January 29, 2016 and will publish the U.S. and Canadian Cattle report, which uses data from the January Cattle report, on March 8, 2016.

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 U.S. 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.

Issued March 4, 2016 by the Agricultural Statistics Board of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. For more information, contact Sue King at sue.king@nass.usda.gov or 202-690-8122.