How COVID-19 impacts what you and your family are able to buy, cook & eat.
THE STAKES (& STEAKS)
- The U.S. is the world’s largest food exporter.
- The U.S. is the world’s largest beef producer & consumer in the world.
- The U.S. is the world’s largest poultry producer. It’s also a major egg producer & the second largest poultry exporter.
- Meat byproducts (ex: gelatin, wool, lanolin) also contribute to many commonly used household products.
What’s the Problem?
The U.S. food supply chain is impacted by COVID-19 in these two ways:
- Distribution: Restaurants, cafeterias, closed, immediately halting demand.
- Human Power: When plants shut down due to illness/sick leave, fewer workers can process food.
Why It Matters: Livestock farmers have too much product & nowhere to send it.
THE LATEST
- The U.S. gov’t considers livestock, agriculture workers “critical.”
- Large processing plants employ a lot of people working in close quarters.
- Outbreaks have halted production. U.S. meat industry workers have reportedly died from COVID-19.
- This has led to the closure of major U.S. meat processing plants, potentially impacting meat supply nationwide (and beyond).
“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain… Farmers across the country will not have anywhere to sell their livestock to be processed, when they could have fed the nation… The food supply chain is breaking.”
“They say, ‘How dare you throw away food when so many people are hungry?.’ They don’t know how farming works. This makes me sick, too.”
What This Means For You
Even if individual families buy more at the grocery store, we can’t make up for the large, bulk purchasing power of restaurants, corporate cafeterias, event catering and beyond.
Some economists believe the disruption in the supply chain (lower supply due to closed processing plants) will lead to higher prices for all in the weeks and months ahead.
Currently, meat produced for food-service (like restaurants) cannot be repackaged and sold in grocery stores, or donated easily. The USDA has set up an emergency network to try to coordinate oversupply, funneling it to places of need.
