HHI places a market on a 0–10,000 concentration scale. The 2023 Merger Guidelines flag anything past 1,800 as highly concentrated; this observatory classifies with the more conservative 2,500 line.
HHI is withheld here — public firm-level data isn’t sufficient for a reliable calculation.
Evidence atlas
Source to public action route
80%
Public coverage1 share rows
Live evidence packetGap namedHHI stays withheld until public shares support it
Reusable rows733 sources, 1 share rows
Public actionEvidence buildPublish firm-level shares, ownership/control links, and market-definition notes before public agencies rely on private estimates.
Data
2019
Incomplete
Packet
73 rows
3 core sources
Action
Evidence build
Public data gap
Public stake
Food and agriculture
Concentrated markets turn everyday access into private leverage.
Evidence posture
Data gap
73 reusable rows across 3 core sources.
Government duty
Evidence build
Publish firm-level shares, ownership/control links, and market-definition notes before public agencies rely on private estimates.
HHI
Withheld
Classification unavailable
Published CR4
85.00%
Top-four purchase share
Firm shares
Withheld
Aggregate not decomposed
Data status
Incomplete
Source availability
Confidence
High
Methodology limits
Review flags
1
Evidence build
Insufficient public market-share data for HHI calculation
The 85 percent CR4 is a national buyer-side anchor and not a regional cattle procurement market definition.
Observatory market brief
Beef meatpacking: published top-four share up 49 points, while firm-level HHI remains unavailable.
The latest structured aggregate is 85.0%. Individual shares do not close a firm-level distribution, so HHI remains withheld. Published CR4 rose by 49 percentage points from 1980 to 2019, moving from 36 to 85.
01
Latest structure
85.0% aggregate
The latest structured aggregate is 85.0%. Individual shares do not close a firm-level distribution, so HHI remains withheld.
02
Published change
+49 Published CR4
Published CR4 rose by 49 percentage points from 1980 to 2019, moving from 36 to 85.
03
Evidence custody
1 custody record
1 record in the evidence custody chain, 1 latest share row, 0 linked official records, and 2 related briefs support this profile. Status is incomplete with high confidence.
Comparison window
Published CR4
198036Change+49 pts201985
percentage points
Measured-market contextHHI withheldexcluded from HHI ranking
Public research question
Which individual firm shares and geographic boundaries are needed to move from aggregate concentration facts to a complete market screen?
Evidence build
Publish firm-level shares, ownership/control links, and market-definition notes before public agencies rely on private estimates.Open public-action route
Market-definition contract
Read the boundary before the metric.
This profile’s concentration claims apply only to the product, geography, denominator, and measurement basis documented below.
Agency definedhigh confidence2019 basis
Product boundary
Purchases of steers and heifers by beef packers
Geographic boundary
United States, while cattle procurement often occurs in regional markets
Measurement basis
USDA-reported share of steer and heifer purchases handled by the four largest beef packers
Denominator
All U.S. steer and heifer purchases represented in the USDA historical CR4 series
Included
The aggregate top-four packer share at published historical anchors
Publish the USDA national CR4 anchors and withhold HHI until a complete individual packer-share distribution is public and citable.
A national aggregate buyer-side CR4 is not an HHI, does not identify individual firms, and does not define the regional procurement choices facing a particular rancher or feeder.
Boundary source
Concentration in U.S. Meatpacking Industry and How It Affects Competition and Cattle Prices
U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service · accessed 2026-07-19
The same 0-10,000 HHI scale does not make different product, geographic, or denominator definitions economically interchangeable. Cross-market HHI is a descriptive screen only.
Evidence timeline
Follow the profile from source record to public action.
Each profile should read like an inspectable research route: source access, concentration metric, participant table, official policy chronology, briefing, and the government question it creates.
Strong public profiles are navigable. This view connects the current market to sector peers, concentration peers, and disclosure-gap peers using the public metrics already in the observatory. Node size follows published HHI; withheld HHI uses the smallest marker.
United States / regional cattle procurement markets · 2019 · U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
1 sourced rows
The available public shares are aggregate or selected local-market figures, not a firm-level decomposition of a single market, so a market-share treemap would misrepresent the data. See the sourced rows below for what is published.
Keep HHI, firm shares, trend, and evidence quality separate so researchers can inspect why this market is routed for review.
Review posture
Evidence build
Confidence
High confidence
Exact flags
1 visible
Screening rule
Review posture uses published concentration thresholds, trend direction, and evidence status as separate signals. It does not estimate consumer harm or establish legal liability.
Public implication
Publish firm-level shares, ownership/control links, and market-definition notes before public agencies rely on private estimates.
Evidence still needed
Firm-level shares and local ownership/control data
Public data incomplete
Data provenance
Methodology: Treat the published values as a national buyer-side aggregate CR4. Do not infer individual shares, calculate HHI, or treat the national series as a defined regional cattle procurement market.
Limitations: The 85 percent CR4 is a national buyer-side anchor and not a regional cattle procurement market definition.
Concentration in U.S. Meatpacking Industry and How It Affects Competition and Cattle Prices
U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
agency report
MacDonald, James M., Concentration in U.S. Meatpacking Industry and How It Affects Competition and Cattle Prices, U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, January 25 2024.
2022 Economic Census Concentration of Largest Firms
U.S. Census Bureau
public dataset
U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, EC2200SIZECONCEN: Selected Sectors - Concentration of Largest Firms for the United States, released April 2025.
2017 Economic Census Concentration of Largest Firms
U.S. Census Bureau
public dataset
U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 Economic Census, EC1700SIZECONCEN: Selected Sectors - Concentration of Largest Firms for the United States, released November 2020.
Treat the published values as a national buyer-side aggregate CR4. Do not infer individual shares, calculate HHI, or treat the national series as a defined regional cattle procurement market.