This paper examines USDA one-step ahead forecasts of quarterly beef, pork, and poultry production. The forecasts are evaluated based on traditional criteria for optimality-efficiency and unbiasedness-as well as their performance versus an univariate time series model. The results suggest that the USDA forecasts are unbiased; however, they are generally not efficient. That is, they do not fully incorporate the information contained in past forecasts. Moreover, the USDA predictions do not encompass all the information contained in forecasts generated by simple time series models.