Consumers are paying near record beef prices and cattle ranchers are receiving below cost-of-production prices for their cattle - a loss of nearly 300-dollars per head in 22 of the last 23 months. That’s according to R-CALF USA. The group says USDA data show ranchers received the smallest share of the consumer’s beef dollar in seven years during the first quarter of 2009. Ranchers received just more than a thousand dollars for raising a Choice beef steer from birth to about 18-months of age - while consumers who purchased the Choice beef paid a little over two-thousand dollars for the meat.

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard says the middlemen have captured unjust profits away from the rancher and exploited the consumer - with the producer receiving only 43-percent of the consumer’s beef dollar. He says consumers wouldn’t pay long-term record beef prices while cattle producers suffer long-term in a competitive marketplace - but since this is happening - it shows that U.S. producers and consumers have lost their competitive marketplace. R-CALF is calling on USDA and the Department of Justice to protect U.S. farmers and ranchers from the anticompetitive practices disrupting the competitive market.