With slaughterhouses closing because of workers calling in sick over the coronavirus, farmers don’t have a market for their animals.
The clock is ticking for the U.S. to avoid a meat shortage as sick workers force more slaughterhouses to shut down.
Things are so dire that Iowa, the biggest hog state, activated the National Guard to help protect supplies.“Meat shortages will be occurring two weeks from now in the retail outlets,” Dennis Smith, a senior account executive at Archer Financial Services, said, citing industry sources. “There is simply no spot pork available. The big box stores will get their needs met, many others will not.”
“For all the talk of cold-storage supplies, it’s just never a lot,” Bob Brown, an independent market consultant in Edmond, Okla., said about supplies of pork, beef and poultry. “It’s roughly a week’s worth of production in the freezer.”The Tyson facility in Waterloo, Iowa, will stop running midweek until further notice, the company said, adding that reopening would depend partly on the results of employee testing for the coronavirus.
Shutdowns for slaughtering plants are cascading through meat supply chains and causing weird dislocations for prices — finished products are surging, while farmers are getting paid much less for animals.Prices for pork bellies, the cut that’s turned into bacon, have more than doubled in just the four days through Tuesday on supply concerns.
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