U.S. Shutdown Seen Threatening Transparency for Livestock Market
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The first U.S. government shutdown in 17 years is curbing the collection of cash-livestock prices and threatening to reduce transparency in the futures market used for price discovery by farmers and meat processors.
CME Group Inc., the world’s biggest futures-exchange operator, said today it’s suspending publishing measurements of cash prices for hogs and feeder cattle. The indexes, used to settle some futures contracts, depend on data distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Parts of the agency have been shuttered.