Producer Price Index for cattle sold for slaughter, a WPU commodity index priced at the live-animal stage rather than the finished beef product. Index base: 1982 = 100.
Latest value
362.811
Index · as of Aug 2026
Year-over-year change
-3.3%
BLS
Month-over-month change
-6.4%
Latest value is 1 month old. Next update expected around Sep 2026.
Calculate your adjustment
Free, no account needed. Nothing you enter here leaves your browser.
Enter a base value, a current value, and a contract amount to see the adjustment.
Price history
Data & insights
Key figures
From Jan 2024 to Aug 2026 the index went from 256.3 to 362.8, a change of +41.5%.
Highest reading in that period: 408.6 in May 2026. Lowest: 256.3 in Jan 2024.
Largest one-month rise: +6.3% in Feb 2024. Largest one-month fall: -6.4% in Aug 2026.
For a clause that resets its base every year, a 10% cap or floor would have limited the adjustment in 17 of the last 20 months.
Volatility (12mo)
±3.76%
Std. dev. of month-over-month change
Strongest average month-over-month move historically: May (+4.7% avg).
What this means for your clause
Cited in livestock purchase agreements between ranchers and packers, priced at the live-animal stage rather than the finished beef product. A supply contract further down the chain, for boxed beef or retail cuts, needs a separate finished-meat index since packer margins are not fixed.
Draft a clause
A starting point citing this series by name and code. Replace the bracketed terms with your contract's actual scope before use.
The [affected portion] of the Contract Price shall be adjusted using US PPI — Slaughter Cattle (BLS series WPU0131), published by BLS.
Base Period: the index value published for August 2026 (or the month of contract signing, if different) is the Base Value.
Adjustment: at each Adjustment Date, the Current Value is the most recently published three-month average of the index (the Averaging Window). The Escalation Factor equals Current Value divided by Base Value.
Cap: the Escalation Factor applied under this clause shall not exceed 1.10 or fall below 0.90 (a 10% cap and floor) in any single Adjustment Date, regardless of the index's actual movement.
[Replace bracketed terms with your contract's actual affected-portion definition and adjustment-date schedule before use. This is a drafting starting point, not legal advice.]
A food or agricultural escalation clause compares a current-period Producer Price Index value to the value at contract signing (the base period), turns that into a ratio, then applies the ratio to the contract price. BLS splits raw farm commodities (Farm Products, WPU01) from processed food inputs (Processed Foods and Feeds, WPU02); picking the wrong one indexes the contract to the wrong stage of the supply chain, and the series is unusually seasonal, which makes base-period selection especially important.
We use cookies to run Escalake and to understand site traffic. Choose Accept Minimum for essential cookies plus anonymous visit counting only, or Accept All to also let us link activity to your account. Read our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.