Meat Shortages Are Coming as Coronavirus Shuts Down Packing Plants – By Matthew C. Klein (Barron’s) / April 28 2020
The novel coronavirus has upended the U.S. meat-supply chain, with American consumers likely to face shortages of beef and pork before the end of May even as farmers are forced to slaughter millions of unwanted cattle and hogs.
Since the beginning of April, meatpacking plants across the country have been forced to shut in response to viral outbreaks that have infected thousands of workers. Meatpackers work in tight spaces and breathe recirculated air during long shifts, which makes it easy for the virus to transmit across the thousands of workers in a single plant. The United Food & Commercial Workers union estimates that 20 workers in meatpacking and food processing have already died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The union also estimates plant closures have directly reduced beef packing capacity by about 10% and pork packing by 25%. Meatpacking is a skilled profession, so plants can’t simply replace lost workers with unemployed waiters.
“The food supply chain is breaking,” Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson wrote on Sunday. “Millions of pounds of meat will disappear,” and American consumers will soon feel the pinch as supplies in cold storage are run down.
The system is vulnerable to bottlenecks because meatpacking is concentrated in a small number of facilities—many of which are near each other. About 70% of America’s pork-packing capacity, for example, comes from just 20 plants across the country, with about two-thirds of that output coming from plants either in Iowa or near the border with Iowa. (This is because most hog farmers want to be near the corn and soy they use as animal feed.) Iowa now has one of the fastest growth rates of new Covid-19 infections in the entire country.
Continue to article: https://www.barrons.com/articles/meat-shortages-are-coming-as-coronavirus-shuts-down-packing-plants-51588099313?mod=hp_DAY_3
