6 ms·

U.S. Meat Supply Is 'Perilously Close' to a Shortage, CEO Warns

55 points by aazaa 7y ago

save_ferris 7y ago
It's crazy how inaccessible testing still is in the US today. We're completely deluding ourselves if we think we can just open everything back up in May or June and everything will return to normal if we still haven't figured testing out. Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're seeing signs of the curve flattening. But we're still bungling the Covid response on a daily basis by not making testing easier and more accessible.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  >Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? LOTS of people will, and we can reduce the risk with masks. Provide them to employees, require they wear them, maybe require customers wear them too.
  - mr_spothawk 7y ago
    I don't want a mask, or a test. I just want to be left alone to get a bad cough once in a while. Remind me again how many flu deaths we had this season?
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      covid is currently killing more people per day than the flu on a bad season, and that's with a lockdown.
    - mikeyouse 7y ago
      Check out flu deaths vs. COVID deaths in New York for the past couple years: https://i.redd.it/u3fx3aw1n6s41.jpg https://i.redd.it/u3fx3aw1n6s41.jpg That's with a complete lockdown. What do you think that chart would look like if people were just 'left alone to get a bad cough'?
      - mr_spothawk 7y ago
        > What do you think that chart would look like if people were just 'left alone to get a bad cough'? quite similar if it's as contagious as we're told.
    - Animats 7y ago
      Flu (2020): About 600 deaths per day at peak, 14,000 total in US. Coronavirus: 1400-2000 deaths per day now, 23,000 total so far, still climbing.[2] USA #1 in coronavirus deaths! [1] [1] https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-deaths-united-states-each-day-2020-n1177936 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-death...
      - mr_spothawk 7y ago
        seems easy to get counted as a COVID death, ya? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-I...
      - mr_spothawk 7y ago
        https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/1250203878521438208/photo/1 https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/125020387852143820...
  - Taek 7y ago
    Doesn't seem like there are enough masks for this either though. The US is going to need literally billions of masks that are distributed to the population. Are we doing everything we can to ramp up production as fast as possible?
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      even home mad masks are effective.
      - goldenkey 7y ago
        No. Even N95 is even a joke considering the airborne contagiousness of covid19. N95 literally means non-oil-resistant, 95% filtration efficiency. I'll continue to wear my P100 safety mask while the lazy minded cling to the word N95 like it is some panacea or bastion of protection, whilst being statistically trashgutter. Most people have no idea what N95 even means, treating it like some model number. I'm pretty sure that the seal on a mask that secures like a party hat is not good enough when an airborne contaminant is in play.. Let's all just keep using rubber band party hat masks while the intelligent among us sport the P100 eliteness. /s https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheets/respsars.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheet... https://i.imgur.com/cPTZf6h.png https://i.imgur.com/cPTZf6h.png
      - throwaway55554 7y ago
        Effective at what?
        gameswithgo 7y ago
        reducing the chance you will spread the virus to others and to a lesser degree reducing the chance you get it yourself.
    - Animats 7y ago
      No. One company that makes masks says they're not expanding production. The last time they did, as soon as the crisis was over the hospitals started ordering from China again. They had a huge stock of unsold masks, and almost went bankrupt even after layoffs. That's the free market.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    That will help, but it certainly can't facilitate all of the normal consumer behavior that the economy relies on. How do you drink at a bar or eat at a restaurant with a face mask on? Would you event want to? It might help people be more comfortable performing essential tasks in public, but as long as we're seeing thousands of deaths per week on the news, people by and large are going to stay home if they can.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Is that the track record we've set? Does everyone who currently need masks to work get them - like nurses and doctors and folks working in shipping warehouses? Because there is a lot of contrary evidence to that. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-workers-pandemic-risks-own-words/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-workers-pandemic-risks-ow... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-staten-island-walkout-coronavirus/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-staten... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/11/coronavirus-nurses-reach-breaking-point-amid-ppe-face-mask-shortages/2973881001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/11/corona...
- mr_spothawk 7y ago
  >Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Me. I will risk myself. And most of my friends, too.
  - c0nducktr 7y ago
    At least you admit you'd be risking your friends as well.
- twblalock 7y ago
  Earning an income is an important component of self-preservation, and many people would be willing to risk getting the virus if they could go back to work. Millions of people have been laid off or furloughed and cannot find other work because businesses in their industries have been forced to close indefinitely. Some of them may not have money left to feed their children. They definitely would go back to work if they could.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    But who's going to visit these people? Many of the laid off are in service industries.. Who is going to travel or go to restaurants if they could catch a deadly disease from doing so?
    - twblalock 7y ago
      If people were sheltering in place by choice, the lockdowns wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. People were going to bars and restaurants in NYC and the Bay Area up until the lockdowns started. I think a lot of people would start living relatively normally again -- health officials want the lockdowns extended because they know that.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  Part of me wonders if testing is kept to a minimum on purpose because lower numbers would help the push to open the economy back up (speaking about US here). But then the other part of me thinks that's just my brain being conspiratorial, because who would be evil enough to do that?
- miketery 7y ago
  We’ve run ~2.9MM tests so far. I think it’s likely testing capacity will get there by mid to late may. Especially if we find cheaper and faster anti body tests (which is a huge focus right now).
  - ac29 7y ago
    A bit of context: this is far, far more than any other country - Germany is second with 1.3M tests, and only two other countries have done over a million [0]. Per capita, we're about middle of the pack for well developed countries (excluding very small micro-nations). [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
  - munk-a 7y ago
    May sounds pretty reasonable up here in Canada - I'm concerned that the US still isn't ramping up production fast enough though. Trump is... and idiot - yea sure whatevers, but right now he's really doing harm by constantly talking about how close to being over this America is - it is causing a lot of companies that could ramp up production to be more conservative since they're worried they might be left with a lot of debt and a lot of unsalable stock.
- ipsin 7y ago
  This seems to be the plan, beyond modestly trying to grow supplies for medical response. The U.S. is not ramping up a slew of mask production lines, unlike, say, Singapore. We're not ramping up testing capacity to the point where we can have every person wearing a high-quality mask and getting tested to start contact-tracing regimes. I wish the federal government stepped up here.
- throwaway894345 7y ago
  Completely agree. I can't even find good information about what our current testing capacity even is (the numbers on the CDC website are hilariously wrong--New York has almost as many positive cases reported per day as the CDC reports have been run--both positive and negative results--nationally). Further, for whatever reason, I can't find good information from the media about what various levels of government are doing about testing. It was almost inexcusable in the first month--CDC was clearly planning for an outbreak on the order of thousands of people in total (tiny reserve of masks and ventilators, severely limited testing capacity, etc), but now it's been a month that South Korea has had drive through testing facilities and by all appearances our CDC still doesn't even know how many tests are performed per day much less how it's going to scale up testing so we can "reopen our economy".
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    > by all appearances our CDC still doesn't even know how many tests are performed per day much less how it's going to scale up testing so we can "reopen our economy". A few weeks ago, IIRC, the CDC said that since the states were providing all the numbers, it wasn't going to bother doing any collation. It strongly looks to me that the federal government has given up trying to help, being led by someone who is utterly incompetent to the task demanded of him. The response at this point is largely being driven by the 50 state governments + various territories + DC, with the president hoping to steal all the credit and avoid any blame whatsoever. And the rest of the federal government seems to be unwilling or unable to take charge of the response.
    - throwaway894345 7y ago
      By no means has Trump done a good job, but I don't think he deserves credit or blame for masks or the testing fiasco. CDC exists to prepare for and manage exactly this scenario and as far as I can tell, it's done neither. There's lots the president can do (and much of which he's failed to do) as well, so there's no shortage of blame to levy at him and his administration, but I'm far more concerned about the CDC's failure because the CDC will outlast any particular president.
- xutopia 7y ago
  This is the main reason why a lot of people believe the numbers are underreported. A lot of people are dying without ever having had a test and are not even counted as a COVID-19 death. Oped on the matter: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/coronavirus-italy-shows-we-may-be-underestimating-death-toll https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/corona...
  - munk-a 7y ago
    They absolutely are underreported, but I believe every country (except maybe South Korea and Singapore) is underreporting cases, even Canada isn't doing great in this regard. That said the US seems to be doing even worse in terms of testing and unfortunately has a spokesman that constantly lies to the world.
- AviationAtom 7y ago
  You do realize that we have done more than DOUBLE the number of tests than the next country in the world (Germany), right? That's 2.9m tests vs 1.3m. The infrastructure to support testing can't magically expand over night. The hypochondriacs are consuming many of those tests, with positive tests being a tiny portion of that 2.9m number.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
xenospn 7y ago
Good. Eat some vegetables. Most of you are overweight as it is.
- dang 7y ago
  Not here, please.
- joegahona 7y ago
  As aggressive as your post is, I have to agree, and kudos for NPR for not groping for the juicier headline: > "It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement. No, it's impossible to keep the _meat aisles_ stocked, which is an aisle I and lots of other Americans couldn't care less about.
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    Smithfield is owned by the Chinese. Their economy is getting back on track, let them bail out Smithfield.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Easy meat substitutes like tofu will run out very shortly after real meat does. Demand and thus supply for these is very small compared to the demand for real meat. I hope you know how to cook with stuff like dry chickpeas. There's normally little retail demand for them but it'll be easier to shift wholesale capacity to retail.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  Most of US obesity comes from consumption of junk food, so, crunchy fried potato chips and corn puffs don't go away when we run out of meat. Pork grinds and beef jerky being the obvious exceptions, I suppose.
- renewiltord 7y ago
  If you're going to call people fat, you gotta post physique.
Fiveplus 7y ago
If this is the case with plants across all the states, does this directly mean meat prices are about to skyrocket?
ancorevard 7y ago
This is might be great news from a societal healthcare perspective. Just like in England during WW2, meat was is short supply, and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc. The end results was a generation (for those WW2 years) that never before or after has been as healthy. Both life expectancy (excluding those in the military) and birth mortality went down It's a great study in epigenetics.
- dsl 7y ago
  > and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc. The "etc." is key here. "Cannibalism by necessity" was more common during World War 2 than most people realize. While it didn't hit the United States, we are still uncovering documentation of it happening on both sides of the war in Europe and Asia. You could make all sorts of dietary speculation about that as well. But the reality is war kills the weak by numerous means and - surprise - you're left with a pretty healthy population.
inieves 7y ago
this is not as bad as it sounds, people can discover many other sources (also lower cost) of protein. perhaps this leads to decreased meat consumption, not at all a bad thing.
- russtrotter 7y ago
  If this was a simple change of preferences due to all the vegan/vegetarian talking points, I could agree with your premise. The thing I wonder about C19 is that what kinds of agricultural processes involve humans ensuring that beans/corn/greens/starches get from the fields into produce aisles and cans? The same reasoning on shutting down production for infection risk applies there as well.
  - dsl 7y ago
    Meat has the shortest shelf life of foods, so any impact on the food supply chain will be felt there first. US Agriculture as a whole employs 22 million people. Of that, meet production is about 500,000. Fruits, vegetables, and grains take an order of magnitude more hands to make it to the table, so to speak.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Jeema101 7y ago
The press release seems very strange. It announces that the plant is closing, yet in the statement by the CEO seems like he doesn't want the plant to close... but was forced to maybe? I wonder if maybe their business liability insurer threatened to drop them if they remained open or something.
- mikecoles 7y ago
  Sounded like a business executive pitching for higher rates. Buy local. There aren't any less animals being born or heading to the butcher. Farmers around here are even skipping the middleman and selling directly. Eggs, grains, milk, and vegetables can also be obtained from nearly the source. If they can't, blame your local and state government for injecting needless regulations.
tekkk 7y ago
I myself enjoy eating meat and while I need the protein, I've also understood that the taste, is it the umami combined with protein and fat, is what makes meat so delicious. So while I have experimented with some veggie food, mostly just beans, I don't know how to get a similar tasting food as easily as just buying sausages or frying chicken on a pan. Then add some rice and a nice salad. There was a veggie restaurant I used to go who knew how to make really good tasting veggie food, I wonder was it just using a lot of umami replacements like stock pots. On the other hand an excessive meat-eating without any exercise or other reason than "because it tastes good" I don't understand. You are just clogging up your arteries and really starving your body of important vitamins that you need from veggies. So while the situation is unfortunate, I am curious what those who enjoy their daily steaks will do when the meat runs out. Buy canned meat? Or some low-meat products like sausages? I guess they'll mostly just switch to fatty foods instead, like burgers and french fries and whatnot.

55 points by aazaa 7y ago

It's crazy how inaccessible testing still is in the US today. We're completely deluding ourselves if we think we can just open everything back up in May or June and everything will return to normal if we still haven't figured testing out. Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're seeing signs of the curve flattening. But we're still bungling the Covid response on a daily basis by not making testing easier and more accessible.

gameswithgo 7y ago
>Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? LOTS of people will, and we can reduce the risk with masks. Provide them to employees, require they wear them, maybe require customers wear them too.
- mr_spothawk 7y ago
  I don't want a mask, or a test. I just want to be left alone to get a bad cough once in a while. Remind me again how many flu deaths we had this season?
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    covid is currently killing more people per day than the flu on a bad season, and that's with a lockdown.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Check out flu deaths vs. COVID deaths in New York for the past couple years: https://i.redd.it/u3fx3aw1n6s41.jpg https://i.redd.it/u3fx3aw1n6s41.jpg That's with a complete lockdown. What do you think that chart would look like if people were just 'left alone to get a bad cough'?
    - mr_spothawk 7y ago
      > What do you think that chart would look like if people were just 'left alone to get a bad cough'? quite similar if it's as contagious as we're told.
  - Animats 7y ago
    Flu (2020): About 600 deaths per day at peak, 14,000 total in US. Coronavirus: 1400-2000 deaths per day now, 23,000 total so far, still climbing.[2] USA #1 in coronavirus deaths! [1] [1] https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-deaths-united-states-each-day-2020-n1177936 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-death...
    - mr_spothawk 7y ago
      seems easy to get counted as a COVID death, ya? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-I...
    - mr_spothawk 7y ago
      https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/1250203878521438208/photo/1 https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/125020387852143820...
- Taek 7y ago
  Doesn't seem like there are enough masks for this either though. The US is going to need literally billions of masks that are distributed to the population. Are we doing everything we can to ramp up production as fast as possible?
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    even home mad masks are effective.
    - goldenkey 7y ago
      No. Even N95 is even a joke considering the airborne contagiousness of covid19. N95 literally means non-oil-resistant, 95% filtration efficiency. I'll continue to wear my P100 safety mask while the lazy minded cling to the word N95 like it is some panacea or bastion of protection, whilst being statistically trashgutter. Most people have no idea what N95 even means, treating it like some model number. I'm pretty sure that the seal on a mask that secures like a party hat is not good enough when an airborne contaminant is in play.. Let's all just keep using rubber band party hat masks while the intelligent among us sport the P100 eliteness. /s https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheets/respsars.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheet... https://i.imgur.com/cPTZf6h.png https://i.imgur.com/cPTZf6h.png
    - throwaway55554 7y ago
      Effective at what?
      - gameswithgo 7y ago
        reducing the chance you will spread the virus to others and to a lesser degree reducing the chance you get it yourself.
  - Animats 7y ago
    No. One company that makes masks says they're not expanding production. The last time they did, as soon as the crisis was over the hospitals started ordering from China again. They had a huge stock of unsold masks, and almost went bankrupt even after layoffs. That's the free market.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  That will help, but it certainly can't facilitate all of the normal consumer behavior that the economy relies on. How do you drink at a bar or eat at a restaurant with a face mask on? Would you event want to? It might help people be more comfortable performing essential tasks in public, but as long as we're seeing thousands of deaths per week on the news, people by and large are going to stay home if they can.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Is that the track record we've set? Does everyone who currently need masks to work get them - like nurses and doctors and folks working in shipping warehouses? Because there is a lot of contrary evidence to that. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-workers-pandemic-risks-own-words/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-workers-pandemic-risks-ow... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-staten-island-walkout-coronavirus/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-staten... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/11/coronavirus-nurses-reach-breaking-point-amid-ppe-face-mask-shortages/2973881001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/11/corona...
mr_spothawk 7y ago
>Who's going to want to risk themselves or their employees if we can't ensure our own safety? Me. I will risk myself. And most of my friends, too.
- c0nducktr 7y ago
  At least you admit you'd be risking your friends as well.
twblalock 7y ago
Earning an income is an important component of self-preservation, and many people would be willing to risk getting the virus if they could go back to work. Millions of people have been laid off or furloughed and cannot find other work because businesses in their industries have been forced to close indefinitely. Some of them may not have money left to feed their children. They definitely would go back to work if they could.
- mikeyouse 7y ago
  But who's going to visit these people? Many of the laid off are in service industries.. Who is going to travel or go to restaurants if they could catch a deadly disease from doing so?
  - twblalock 7y ago
    If people were sheltering in place by choice, the lockdowns wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. People were going to bars and restaurants in NYC and the Bay Area up until the lockdowns started. I think a lot of people would start living relatively normally again -- health officials want the lockdowns extended because they know that.
throwaway55554 7y ago
Part of me wonders if testing is kept to a minimum on purpose because lower numbers would help the push to open the economy back up (speaking about US here). But then the other part of me thinks that's just my brain being conspiratorial, because who would be evil enough to do that?
miketery 7y ago
We’ve run ~2.9MM tests so far. I think it’s likely testing capacity will get there by mid to late may. Especially if we find cheaper and faster anti body tests (which is a huge focus right now).
- ac29 7y ago
  A bit of context: this is far, far more than any other country - Germany is second with 1.3M tests, and only two other countries have done over a million [0]. Per capita, we're about middle of the pack for well developed countries (excluding very small micro-nations). [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
- munk-a 7y ago
  May sounds pretty reasonable up here in Canada - I'm concerned that the US still isn't ramping up production fast enough though. Trump is... and idiot - yea sure whatevers, but right now he's really doing harm by constantly talking about how close to being over this America is - it is causing a lot of companies that could ramp up production to be more conservative since they're worried they might be left with a lot of debt and a lot of unsalable stock.
ipsin 7y ago
This seems to be the plan, beyond modestly trying to grow supplies for medical response. The U.S. is not ramping up a slew of mask production lines, unlike, say, Singapore. We're not ramping up testing capacity to the point where we can have every person wearing a high-quality mask and getting tested to start contact-tracing regimes. I wish the federal government stepped up here.
throwaway894345 7y ago
Completely agree. I can't even find good information about what our current testing capacity even is (the numbers on the CDC website are hilariously wrong--New York has almost as many positive cases reported per day as the CDC reports have been run--both positive and negative results--nationally). Further, for whatever reason, I can't find good information from the media about what various levels of government are doing about testing. It was almost inexcusable in the first month--CDC was clearly planning for an outbreak on the order of thousands of people in total (tiny reserve of masks and ventilators, severely limited testing capacity, etc), but now it's been a month that South Korea has had drive through testing facilities and by all appearances our CDC still doesn't even know how many tests are performed per day much less how it's going to scale up testing so we can "reopen our economy".
- jcranmer 7y ago
  > by all appearances our CDC still doesn't even know how many tests are performed per day much less how it's going to scale up testing so we can "reopen our economy". A few weeks ago, IIRC, the CDC said that since the states were providing all the numbers, it wasn't going to bother doing any collation. It strongly looks to me that the federal government has given up trying to help, being led by someone who is utterly incompetent to the task demanded of him. The response at this point is largely being driven by the 50 state governments + various territories + DC, with the president hoping to steal all the credit and avoid any blame whatsoever. And the rest of the federal government seems to be unwilling or unable to take charge of the response.
  - throwaway894345 7y ago
    By no means has Trump done a good job, but I don't think he deserves credit or blame for masks or the testing fiasco. CDC exists to prepare for and manage exactly this scenario and as far as I can tell, it's done neither. There's lots the president can do (and much of which he's failed to do) as well, so there's no shortage of blame to levy at him and his administration, but I'm far more concerned about the CDC's failure because the CDC will outlast any particular president.
xutopia 7y ago
This is the main reason why a lot of people believe the numbers are underreported. A lot of people are dying without ever having had a test and are not even counted as a COVID-19 death. Oped on the matter: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/coronavirus-italy-shows-we-may-be-underestimating-death-toll https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/corona...
- munk-a 7y ago
  They absolutely are underreported, but I believe every country (except maybe South Korea and Singapore) is underreporting cases, even Canada isn't doing great in this regard. That said the US seems to be doing even worse in terms of testing and unfortunately has a spokesman that constantly lies to the world.
AviationAtom 7y ago
You do realize that we have done more than DOUBLE the number of tests than the next country in the world (Germany), right? That's 2.9m tests vs 1.3m. The infrastructure to support testing can't magically expand over night. The hypochondriacs are consuming many of those tests, with positive tests being a tiny portion of that 2.9m number.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

xenospn 7y ago

Good. Eat some vegetables. Most of you are overweight as it is.

dang 7y ago
Not here, please.
joegahona 7y ago
As aggressive as your post is, I have to agree, and kudos for NPR for not groping for the juicier headline: > "It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement. No, it's impossible to keep the _meat aisles_ stocked, which is an aisle I and lots of other Americans couldn't care less about.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  Smithfield is owned by the Chinese. Their economy is getting back on track, let them bail out Smithfield.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Easy meat substitutes like tofu will run out very shortly after real meat does. Demand and thus supply for these is very small compared to the demand for real meat. I hope you know how to cook with stuff like dry chickpeas. There's normally little retail demand for them but it'll be easier to shift wholesale capacity to retail.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
Most of US obesity comes from consumption of junk food, so, crunchy fried potato chips and corn puffs don't go away when we run out of meat. Pork grinds and beef jerky being the obvious exceptions, I suppose.
renewiltord 7y ago
If you're going to call people fat, you gotta post physique.

Fiveplus 7y ago

If this is the case with plants across all the states, does this directly mean meat prices are about to skyrocket?

ancorevard 7y ago

This is might be great news from a societal healthcare perspective. Just like in England during WW2, meat was is short supply, and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc. The end results was a generation (for those WW2 years) that never before or after has been as healthy. Both life expectancy (excluding those in the military) and birth mortality went down It's a great study in epigenetics.

dsl 7y ago
> and as a result people had to resolve to eating more vegetables etc. The "etc." is key here. "Cannibalism by necessity" was more common during World War 2 than most people realize. While it didn't hit the United States, we are still uncovering documentation of it happening on both sides of the war in Europe and Asia. You could make all sorts of dietary speculation about that as well. But the reality is war kills the weak by numerous means and - surprise - you're left with a pretty healthy population.

inieves 7y ago

this is not as bad as it sounds, people can discover many other sources (also lower cost) of protein. perhaps this leads to decreased meat consumption, not at all a bad thing.

russtrotter 7y ago
If this was a simple change of preferences due to all the vegan/vegetarian talking points, I could agree with your premise. The thing I wonder about C19 is that what kinds of agricultural processes involve humans ensuring that beans/corn/greens/starches get from the fields into produce aisles and cans? The same reasoning on shutting down production for infection risk applies there as well.
- dsl 7y ago
  Meat has the shortest shelf life of foods, so any impact on the food supply chain will be felt there first. US Agriculture as a whole employs 22 million people. Of that, meet production is about 500,000. Fruits, vegetables, and grains take an order of magnitude more hands to make it to the table, so to speak.
deleted 7y ago
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Jeema101 7y ago

The press release seems very strange. It announces that the plant is closing, yet in the statement by the CEO seems like he doesn't want the plant to close... but was forced to maybe? I wonder if maybe their business liability insurer threatened to drop them if they remained open or something.

mikecoles 7y ago
Sounded like a business executive pitching for higher rates. Buy local. There aren't any less animals being born or heading to the butcher. Farmers around here are even skipping the middleman and selling directly. Eggs, grains, milk, and vegetables can also be obtained from nearly the source. If they can't, blame your local and state government for injecting needless regulations.

tekkk 7y ago

I myself enjoy eating meat and while I need the protein, I've also understood that the taste, is it the umami combined with protein and fat, is what makes meat so delicious. So while I have experimented with some veggie food, mostly just beans, I don't know how to get a similar tasting food as easily as just buying sausages or frying chicken on a pan. Then add some rice and a nice salad. There was a veggie restaurant I used to go who knew how to make really good tasting veggie food, I wonder was it just using a lot of umami replacements like stock pots. On the other hand an excessive meat-eating without any exercise or other reason than "because it tastes good" I don't understand. You are just clogging up your arteries and really starving your body of important vitamins that you need from veggies. So while the situation is unfortunate, I am curious what those who enjoy their daily steaks will do when the meat runs out. Buy canned meat? Or some low-meat products like sausages? I guess they'll mostly just switch to fatty foods instead, like burgers and french fries and whatnot.