Are you planning a big 4th of July cookout? 

Well, according to the USDA's Livestock Analyst Shayle Shagam you won't have to worry about finding your favorite meat items at the supermarket. 

"We have seen production increase around the very low low levels we saw at the beginning of May."

Shagam said not only is output of beef, pork, and chicken increased from the low levels of April and May, but also from last year. He added most processing plants have not returned to normal levels, but he said plants have reported a sharp increase in the weights of the animals. Which means meat production numbers for the first part of June was actually a little higher year over year.

"In the case of beef, we're looking at production up about 1%"

Pork is up 2%, chicken is up a little less than 1% so we shouldn't have trouble finding what we need for that holiday cookout. The prices supermarkets had to pay a weeks ago for meat were higher than a year ago. 


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