Blood meal market: what drives prices

Blood meal prices are set by how much blood the packing plants collect and by a short list of buyers who pay for its protein on their own terms. Supply follows cattle and hog slaughter. Demand comes from dairy and feedlot rations that want bypass protein, from pet food, aquaculture and other feed makers, from organic fertilizer and from export buyers. Soybean meal, the benchmark most protein feeds are priced against, has had little pull on it.

The US blood meal market is small and thinly quoted: USDA's weekly feedstuffs board carries it out of a handful of plant regions, split into ruminant and porcine streams, and its latest figure is $1,500 per ton as of Oct 12, 2026 (ruminant grade, national median across 3 FOB plant regions, USDA), up 49% from $1,006 a year earlier.

What the board shows since 2022

This site's series is ruminant blood meal, the grade USDA quotes in the most regions, and it starts in February 2022, when USDA moved its feedstuff reports to their current platform. Porcine blood meal is priced separately on the blood meal price page. The annual averages carry the main story:

• 2022: $1,223 a ton, swinging from $1,994 in July to $708 at the end of October.
• 2023: $1,036.
• 2024: $1,086.
• 2025: $1,096.

Over the same four years soybean meal, the protein benchmark, averaged $463, $445, $352 and $283 a ton. Soybean meal lost more than a third of its price between 2023 and 2025, while blood meal's annual average moved within $60 a ton. Per pound of crude protein on a dry-matter basis, blood meal went from 1.29 times soybean meal's cost in 2023 to 2.14 times in 2025. In 226 of the 233 weekly reports from February 2022 through September 2026, a pound of protein cost more in blood meal than in soybean meal, at a median of 1.63 times.

Blood meal does not trade as a cheaper or dearer soybean meal. It is a separate product with its own supply and its own buyers, and those are what move it.

Supply: set at the packing plant

There is no crop behind blood meal and no planting decision. Every ton starts as blood collected on a kill floor, so the volume available tracks the number of animals slaughtered, less what the plants separate into plasma for pig starter feeds before any meal is made. The blood meal price page covers that split.

Cattle numbers have been falling. USDA's Livestock Slaughter 2025 Summary put commercial cattle slaughter at 29.8 million head in 2025, down 6 percent from 2024, and its September 2026 report has January through August 2026 at 18.4 million head, 7 percent below the same months of 2025. The herd behind those numbers stood at 86.2 million head on January 1, 2026, slightly below a year earlier, in USDA's Cattle report. Hog slaughter, the other main source, ran level with 2025 through August.

The summer of 2026 on the board fits that pattern. Between July 6 and September 21 ruminant blood meal rose 47 percent, from $1,046 to $1,541 a ton. Ruminant meat and bone meal, also from cattle rendering, rose 59 percent. Soybean meal rose 22 percent, and feather meal, which comes from poultry plants, rose 10 percent.

The two streams: ruminant and porcine

USDA quotes ruminant and porcine blood meal as separate products, and the board shows they do not trade as one. In Minnesota, the one region where USDA quotes both streams most weeks, porcine blood meal sold above ruminant in 200 of the 223 weeks both were quoted from February 2022 through August 2026. Porcine's edge averaged $177 a ton in 2022 and between $55 and $88 a ton in each year since. The order is not fixed: ruminant moved above porcine in late July 2026 and stood at $1,300 against $1,225 on August 31. In the Central US, where porcine is quoted less often, ruminant sold higher in 37 of the 99 weeks both were quoted.

Demand: who bids for it

Several kinds of buyer compete for the same tons, and none of them prices blood meal off soybean meal.

Ruminant rations. Blood meal is a bypass protein. Feedipedia puts rumen-undegradable protein at up to 78 percent of the total, rising with the heat used in processing, and the North American Renderers Association's buyer's guide puts more than 75 percent of whole blood's protein past the rumen. Dairies and feedlots price it against other bypass proteins such as feather meal, not against soybean meal, most of which breaks down in the rumen.

Other feed makers. NARA's guide lists blood meal as a protein source for all classes of poultry and livestock, many exotic animals and some fish, and Feedipedia calls it a good quality ingredient for fish, with spray-dried meal also used as a binder in fish feed. Those buyers care how it was dried: Feedipedia finds lysine content and availability fall as more heat is applied, which is why buyers specify the drying method.

Fertilizer. Organic fertilizer makers buy blood meal for its nitrogen and have no use for the drying premium a feed buyer pays, so they value the same ton on different terms.

Exports. Overseas buyers bid for rendered proteins as a group. NARA says almost twenty percent of US rendered products are exported each year, with Mexico, China, Indonesia, Chile, Singapore, the European Union and Canada its top markets.

Reading the board

The table reads the latest blood meal price against a week, a month and a year earlier and against the series' own median. On the protein side, blood meal costs $0.867 per pound of crude protein on the latest board, 216% of soybean meal's cost per pound of protein. Feather meal, its usual bypass-protein rival, costs $0.309 per pound of crude protein.

The arithmetic is easy to check by hand. At $1,500 a ton, 92 percent dry matter and 94 percent crude protein on a dry-matter basis (the values this site uses for blood meal), a ton of dry matter costs $1,630 and holds 1,880 pounds of protein, so the protein costs about $0.87 a pound. Soybean meal at $350 a ton, 89 percent dry matter and 53.5 percent protein works out to about $0.37. On those round numbers blood meal's protein costs 2.4 times as much, inside the range the board has shown since 2022.

The board above sets blood meal against every other protein feed in the latest USDA week, with a Category column that keeps the animal proteins apart from the oilseed meals. Crude protein counts nitrogen. It does not price bypass value, lysine or drying quality, which is what blood meal's buyers pay for. What is blood meal? covers the grades and the limits on feeding it.

The Ration reports the USDA blood meal price as published and describes what moves it. It does not forecast blood meal prices or say what to feed.