By Karl Plume
CHICAGO, Aug 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats asked the Department of Agriculture late on Wednesday to explain what caused the agency to vastly overstate beef export sales last month and what role department staff losses played in the mistake.
Six senators, led by Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, sent a letter to USDA Deputy Under Secretary Michelle Bekkering seeking details about USDA's data
procedures amid growing concerns among farmers, grain merchants and investors about market-moving data produced by the agency.
In July, the USDA reported a nearly 500% jump in weekly U.S. beef export sales before revising the figure down by 90% a week later, calling it "an isolated processing issue."
The beef export sales error was the latest of a series of questionable USDA reports amid concerns about data quality after staffing losses during the Trump administration's reshaping of the federal government.
Last summer, analysts voiced concerns about agency data integrity after the USDA delayed a report and excluded findings that pointed to tariffs as a reason for a forecasted increase in the agricultural trade deficit.
And early this year, industry economists and farmers raised questions about the accuracy of USDA reports after the agency issued massive unexpected revisions to U.S. corn acreage. These revisions prompted USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, which releases acreage estimates, to launch an internal review.
Traders and analysts had cast doubt on the beef export data because it included sales to some countries that were several times larger than those countries had ever purchased from the United States. The data error came as consumers grappled with soaring beef prices and as meat packers have shuttered beef plants amid the smallest U.S. cattle herd in decades.
The lawmakers sought information about what caused the error and measures being taken to prevent reporting problems in the future, according to the letter dated August 19, which was reviewed by Reuters.
They also asked the USDA to explain how its data is being used to shape federal tariff policies and assess progress on trade deals, and to detail staff losses since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
The lawmakers said that questions about the reliability of USDA data are not new, but that problems with data errors can have broader ripple effects.
"When issues like this arise, it can cause downstream market impacts at all levels of the cattle industry, as well as consumers," the senators wrote. "An erosion of trust in this data would not only undermine domestic markets but could also lead to further damage in U.S. relationships with our trading partners."
(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago. Editing by P.J. Huffstutter and Sanjeev Miglani)
