U.S.’ ground beef has reached its priciest point in recent memory, with May 2025 price up by 16%, year-on-year (y-o-y).
According to The Cool Down, referencing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, minced beef in May peaked at $5.98 a pound.
Only February 2025’s pricing at 5.625 a pound is comparable, itself below the earlier champ, September 2024’s $5.670.
This marks a 49% spike between April 2020, when beef first grew expensive due to COVID-19, and April 2025.
Why?
Low herd numbers, the screwworm threat, drought and rising demand are all making the United States rely on expensive imports.
One of these sources is Britain with which the U.S. which signed a bilateral pact for both export and import of beef products.
Concerning the herd, the country had its lowest cattle numbers since 1951 in January 2024 at 87.2 million head.
Drought in major cattle areas has not helped replenish the waning numbers, either. In October 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported 62% of cattle as being from drought-hit areas.
As of June 2025, ranchers were in turn keeping back cattle from the markets to breed calves for the next season.
Such market moves are exacerbating the New World Screwworm (NWS)-related supply ebb since an early May 2025 cattle import moratorium from Mexico.
Supplying 1.2 million head of cattle per year, as of 2024, Mexico remains the biggest import source of cattle into the United States.
Luckily, the USDA is establishing a sterile fly base in south Texas to buffer NWS spread, reprising a successful 1960s’ strategy.
Finally, the issue of tariffs may not currently have a direct effect on beef prices in the United States but could soon have. According to farmers, retaliatory import tariffs on potash and wheat from Canada have upped feed costs and could impact meat rates. To learn more on how ground meat fits in the American price context, skim below statistics.
United States Ground Beef and Price Statistics
People in the United States consume about 30 billion pounds of beef yearly, as of 2021. This equals to 60 pounds per person, each year. With consumption at <20 g per person per day, the ground type follows fresh lean beef as the biggest retail type by intake. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), adults between 19 and 59 years take the most ground beef. They attained an intake of >20 g per person per day in 2018, ahead of other age groups.
The pricing, however, makes ground beef a more attractive prospect than either lean or processed type (sausages, burgers, e.t.c). The table below, via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, traces 1984-2025 highlights of ground beef pricing in the U.S.
| Month-and-Year | Price [$/pound] |
| Feb 1984 | 1.308 |
| Apr 1990 | 1.593 |
| Feb 2003 | 2.232 |
| Apr 2015 | 4.231 |
| May 2017 | 3.559 |
| Apr 2020 | 4.052 |
| Oct 2023 | 5.226 |
| Sep 2024 | 5.670 |
| May 2025 | 5.981 |