Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
Many Americans have been absolutely shocked by the meat shortages that have started to happen around the nation, but what most of them don’t realize is that the worst is yet to come. More workers keep getting sick, more processing plants keep getting shut down, and Time Magazine is now warning that the meat shortages “could last for months”. And even if meat is available at your local grocery store, you may be limited to one or two of a particular item on each trip. For those not familiar with the concept, this is what is known as “rationing”.
And even though President Trump just issued an executive order that “encourages” meat processing facilities to stay open, it actually won’t do very much at all to alter our current trajectory, and I will explain why below.
But first, let’s talk about where things currently stand. According to USA Today, the number of cattle, hogs and sheep being slaughtered is way, way down compared to last year…
American slaughterhouses processed nearly a million fewer cattle, hogs and sheep in the past week than they did during the same time a year ago, marking a new low that experts say will likely increase “spot” shortages of meat at some grocery stores.
And as the number of meat processing facilities closing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic has surged, the decline in meat production has accelerated…
Last week, meat production was down about 25 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Wednesday, production was a full 42 percent lower than the same day last year.
If production continues to stay at such a low level, we are going to run into major supply chain headaches very rapidly.
After all, do you plan to eat 42 percent less meat this year?
I certainly do not.
In recent days, there was hope that President Trump’s new executive order would bring a quick end to the meat shortages. When I first heard about this executive order, I assumed that it would force all of the meat processing facilities to reopen and would shield the owners from any lawsuits. But it turns out that this executive order doesn’t actually do either of those things…
Meanwhile, legal experts said President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday declaring meatpacking plants “critical” to keep open will do little on its own to stop the slide in meat production brought on by the spread of the coronavirus among meatpackers.
“It doesn’t compel meat or poultry producers to remain in production,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University, and it doesn’t give employers immunity from lawsuits.
Sadly, it appears that this executive order isn’t really going to do much good at all.
Big meat processing corporations are going to be quite afraid to reopen facilities as long as the threat of lawsuits looms large. I can promise you that there are already lawyers circling like vultures, and they are going to try to squeeze millions of dollars out of these large companies.
So when will the threat of lawsuits finally go away?
Well, it won’t just be “weeks”, and “a few months” might be overly optimistic.
In our overly litigious society, reopening facilities and exposing your employees to the virus while a pandemic is still raging is basically the equivalent of begging for a class action lawsuit.
Unless President Trump or Congress steps up and takes bold action, nothing is going to change.
And if nothing changes, Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the food chain”…
Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat processors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sunday, in which they warned, “the food supply chain is breaking.”
“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,” John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an advertisement. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”
And with supplies getting really tight, we are already starting to see prices go into the stratosphere.
In fact, Zero Hedge is reporting that the price of wholesale beef has already risen a whopping 62 percent since February…
Wholesale American beef prices jumped 6% to a record high of $330.82 per 100 pounds, a 62% increase from the lows in February, according to Bloomberg, citing new USDA data.
Eventually, it is likely that we will get to a point where many Americans are forced to cut back on their consumption of meat because they simply can’t afford as much of it anymore.
I hope that you did what you could to get prepared in advance, because it appears that these shortages may be quite painful. If you can believe it, McDonald’s has already implemented a system of “controlled allocation” for their restaurants…
McDonald’s is temporarily changing how restaurants get their supply of beef and pork, as the US faces potential meat shortages due to slaughterhouse closures.
McDonald’s has put items including burger patties, bacon, and sausage on controlled allocation. That means the company’s supply chain will send restaurants meat shipments based on calculated demand across the American system, as opposed to the usual practice of management ordering the amount believed will be needed.
Did you ever imagine that we would see a day when McDonald’s would be worried about potentially running out of meat?
Well, it is actually happening, and supplies are only going to get tighter in the months ahead.
Sadly, farmers are having to euthanize millions of chickens, pigs and cattle because meat processing facilities won’t take them while they are shut down.
So the truth is that there should be plenty of meat to go around, but fear of COVID-19 has caused a total breakdown of the supply chain.
What is happening is truly a tragedy, and hopefully our politicians will step forward and take dramatic action before things get even worse.
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The Dems are bought by the trial lawyers, so do not expect the politicians to offer any liability indemnity to the meat packers. People hungry for meat will blame Trump and will be supported by the major media.
Entitled Democrats hungry for meat will blame Trump and will be supported by the major media.
democrats (fill in the blank) will blame trump and will be supported by the news/entertainment/social media monopoly/collusion.
The major media is not going to blame you know who. He was the guy who broke your leg with this invisible enemy and now seemingly is handing you a crutch. The attempt to hand you a crutch is going to be the story. The invisible enemy will be blamed for it all as usual. In all wars there are casualties in which the generals take no blame. That is the nature of war. In this war we are the casualties. The general was just trying to win the war. So he will get a parade, a medal and a steak dinner as usual. You will get a headstone.
Well there are lots of useless mouth breather politicians, lawyers, judges, CEOs, and bankers. You are going to have to go heavy on the seasoning to cover up the bitter taste but hey its meat.
Recipe: Baked Ass-hat
1 freshly dropped cow paddy
1 freshly prepared Ass-hat
Salt, pepper, hot sauce
Bake until tender. Remove from heat, throw out the ass-hat and eat the cow paddy if you are still hungry.
The problem is not the virus. One problem is fear. Apparently, most American workers can’t do math or maybe they can make more money by not working.
the source of the fear is finding light.
This is the time that farmers and ranchers should become their own meat processing plants and keep it that way in the future.
There are a lot of deer processors around here that would probably butcher a steer or hog.
Kill, skin, cut and package it yourself.
The USDA and Health Departments make that as difficult as possible. Somehow, people should protest and demand they slack up on impossible rules that prevent local butcher shops and farmers markets from opening.
The take-home message from this entire plannedemic is that GOVERNMENT is the problem 100% of the time. Just look at how many rules, regulations, laws, etc. that have had to be changed or abolished, just to allow businesses to take care of the business of feeding people, etc. No laws that impacted government had to change as they haven’t been doing SHIT during this period other than locking up skateboarders and paddle boarders, and telling us of how they will need to be bailed out “because businesses can’t operate without government.” As examples, they cite every government agency (like the health inspectors) that are “required” for a business to operate…failing to realize of course that they are only REQUIRED, because the LAW requires them. I would be happy visiting a restaurant that had a private inspection company that actually cared about my health and THEIR reputation as a quality health inspection company.
A big yes! I would welcome the return of the small independent farmer. Get rid of the price supports, outrageous seed & equipment costs.
Politicians do not give a f*ck about you or your rights. You do not have a right to clean, non-medicated (poisoned) water, even though YOU PAY FOR IT. You do not have the right to NOT vaccinate your children with toxic chemical adjuvants. You do not have the right to speak against the bureaucrats in a public forum without getting a microscope stuck up your ass, and you damn sure don’t have the right to actual food.
THEY DO NOT CARE if you get sick and die; otherwise, they would have acted four weeks sooner than they did. THEY let the numbers explode – by hook, crook, etc., IN ORDER TO JUSTIFY THIS POWERGRAB.
I GUARANTEE not a single politico in this country will miss a meal, BUT IF YOU STARVE . . . well, COVID 19 claimed another victim.
MORE CONTROL is THE agenda. So, starvation may actually be a “tool”.
Urban Idiots contribute to their own demise by not having yards and gardens. If you don’t have a plot for a garden, then you don’t have a plot to piss in. Is 5:8 says: Woe unto them that lay house to house and field to field. He said leave some open spaces (sadly most Urbanites diss the Bible and Constitution).
Having a veggie garden living in Manhattan isn’t so easy Junior
Which is RH’s point,maybe one should not live in the cities.
With that out of the way one could to at least a degree grow veggies in their own home with hydroponics/grow lights ect.,grow lights have now been made that use less then 20% of the energy old ones did.
You have a patio/deck even better,in good weather you could have pvc vertical hydro growing set up literally on wheels,roll it out in the good weather/keep in apt. ect. in bad.
While a bit of work leb one could actually grow a fair amount of their own stuff,you get millions in the city doing it,you actually have created a city farm were folks could exchange goods from their gardens/perhaps a city farmers market ect.
I would rather see this then the city folks move out in droves to rural lands like locusts!
One of my favorite verses lately, even before covid, thinking of the whole Agenda 21, smart cities, land-restrictions overall agenda.
No one has a right to food or water. Ever. However, they have a right to go about pursuing such without government interference. The govt should stay the hell away from everything, including provision of water, food, healthcare, etc. The market – ie. the people – will sort it out quickly enough if left the fuck alone.
Bravo! Llpoh you nailed it. People should be telling government to get out of my house, off my lawn and completely out of my life.
The govt should stay the hell away from everything”
this miscomprehends the situation, because you see …
“The market – ie. the people – will sort it out quickly enough”
… “the people” are not just a swarm of free-floating disconnected individuals, rather they form groups to get what they want. an individual may get what he seeks, but a group is far more likely to do so. thus government. whether a pair of friends, or a patriarch, or a gang, or a crew, or a team, or a corporation, or a parliament, or an army, or a single dictator, there is always government.
government is never anything more than a collection of people’s interests. what the sociopathic right rejects is not government, but any government outside of themselves – because what they actually reject is other people.
Premeditation would be giving the 9-5 M-F petty bureaucrats far too much credit.
They’re simply taking advantage of the situation.
Expecting politicians to do something is rather naive. They are owned by the corporations who are in turn owned by the bankers.
I continue to say this is a contrived plandemic and a planned takedown of the economy.
TPTB are making a major powerplay before our eyes and most fail to put 2+2 together.
The politicians are lying to us as are the media. It’s all a psych-op for control.
Unfortunately, we are doing exactly as our rulers expect and demand.
Just got done watching this great classic film. Remember, there is always another solution up the Deep State’s sleeve:
I wouldn’t be shocked if it was part of Bill Gates’ plan for meat substitutes.
“meat substitutes”
soylent green.
Soylent is real. https://soylent.com/ The website notes, “We engineer our ever-evolving products to deliver convenient nutrition when you need it.” Green may be next on their changing menu.
Does anyone have a freezer truck they can send to HSF?
They have been selling chickens out of the back of trucks in suburban Atlanta every day for the past week. Long lines, 40lb boxes. Not sure how it is getting processed, but obviously easier to process a chicken than a cow. It is definitely grower-direct sales. I’m sure more will come.
Nice to see some folks thinking and doing what it takes to get their goods straight into customers hands.
I’m just shocked that there weren’t laws PREVENTING such behavior. No doubt in other states/cities, there absolutely ARE.
Never let a good pandemic go to waste. I love it. It also makes more sense than burying them.
April 29th Proclamation signed
April 30th Gold fringe removed
May 1st Happy First Law Day dumb-asses, you missed it!
Did Trump just upstage the Commie’s May Day and flip the world upside down?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-law-day-u-s-2020/
I read that but don’t see anything more than an outline of what the Constitution was initially about, but which no longer exists.
22, please expound on what you think the removal of the fringes signifies.
The author says “do I plan to eat 42% less meat than last week?”. Well, here is the deal: the prices will go up. You can eat all the meat you want – if you can afford it. Same as anywhere on earth.
This entire situation sucks. People are getting pissed off, and it will not take much to ignite the fire. Folks are already giving the finger to state governments.
Fuck them all.
this is misleading. what is happening is that meat is being rationed according to money. if you have “enough” money you get meat. if you don’t have “enough” money then you don’t get meat.
Gman – that is always the case with anything. If you have enough money or tradeables, you can access any damn thing you want.
“that is always the case with anything”
trivially true. I was simply casting the issue in a more relevant light – one that would turn people from saying “YEAH! THAT’S THE WAY IT IS!” to “wait, what, do we want that?”
Just getting started with us. They have demonstrated pretty clearly that we will stay in a virtual cell, do what we are told (mostly do nothing on command), cease productive behavior, voluntarily avoid necessary human contact, and on and on. Now it is the deplorable diet of ours they mean to change. First is meat, and soon it will be sugars and snacks. I have a feeling they will allow, maybe encourage continued supply of alcohol, but may be mistaken. Perhaps this is a good time to procure a small pot still?
Trust and obey. They are just doing what is best for us, really. And those folks in the white coats love us too. The UN and WHO are full of people who only want the best for us. Everyone in DC wants us all to get back to work real soon, and they are having our friends at the Fed help us out.
Brought to you by the same people that lie and cheat all the time, and still be blindly follow their orders with very little question, dissent or protest. When they inaugurate their depopulation and resettlement programs (and they will, sooner than you think) we will go right along with that as well.
Baah! Baah!
well said.
At the risk of sounding like a shill for family farming- not industrial agriculture which is what this entire article is about- this outcome is the fault of the consumer. You- if this applies to you- were the ones who made the decision to always buy your meat and produce at “cheap” prices- again, not really cheap since they are actually subsidized by taxes and the unending immigration of tens of millions in order to sustain it. You who have been reading what I have been writing about openly and with candor for the past ten years understand that there is a link between good health, building community, animal welfare, improved soils, clean water and the preservation of fundamental freedoms and the direct support of family farms. We cannot survive in head to head competition with WalMart pricing, but only by having people regularly purchase their eggs and vegetables, meats and value added goods directly from us and in exchange paying a fair price for those basics while ensuring the continuation of good stewardship of the land and responsible husbandry of everything that lives on it.
For everyone who has supported us long distance by purchasing syrup and close to home by coming up to our farm and buying from us face to face you know how much we- and by extension everyone who practices the same style of diversified and regenerative agriculture- value your patronage and what we do with every dollar we earn. There are no corporate officers, there are only my wife and children, and we don’t earn multi-million dollar bonuses, but we get to look out over what we’ve accomplished at the end of each day with pride.
You must either be prepared to start living a self sufficient lifestyle today, or find someone in your local area that you can start to patronize who practices the same style of family farming and that, right soon.
The clock is ticking folks. You’ve been adequately warned for years, you’ve had more than enough opportunity to adjust habits and re-examine your expectations for the future. Forget this civil war/revolution thinking and start with the simplest premise of where is my next meal going to come from and how will I find a means to be able to feed my family during the Fourth Turning that we are currently in the midst of.
This Spring may be your final opportunity and while their are no guarantees that whatever you do will be enough, especially if you still live in a highly urban environment, you’d better get your head out of your fourth point of contact and stop dreaming that we are ever going to return to the previous incarnation of America the consumer bazaar. It’s over.
Truer words were never spoken Hardscrabble.
HSF, this really is up there with one of your best posts or articles. I agree with every period, every comma. It boils everything down to the LCD. I believe we have 2 more years at most. Given the extremely abbreviated timeframe, I’d humbly suggest the quasi-grasshoppers build community and create a base division of labor. Neighbor X grows Y. Neighbor Y grows Z. And so on.
It takes time to build good soil. You want at least 2 years to let a heavily (12″-14″) mulched area marinate. You want at least 3 years for semi-dwarf and dwarf rootstocks to have time to establish and produce your first crop.
People don’t seem to understand that, as with all things nature, time is of the essence.
I want to leave you, sir, with Powell’s dedication in his book on Living Fences:
https://archive.org/stream/hedgeswindbreaks00powe#page/n7/mode/2up
We’re going to get it back, one apple tree at a time.
Never felt you were a shill. You speak the truth HsF. The problem is, as I see it, people have NO idea what they are up against when it comes to being self sufficient. The reality of letting someone else make decisions for them in the past will knock them on their ass when they plant their first garden, try to hunt their first animal, provide heat in cold weather, acquire water for basic drinking and personal hygiene, transportation over long distances and cloths on your back. These are just a few of the basics. Doing without sounds easy until you live it. I won’t even get into defense against those that your shit for nothing.
Don’t live in the USA, but do live in a consumer society that has no business being one. Come Wednesday, I’ll be on hand to receive my allotment of gov-provided seeds, although I’ve purchased a large collection of open-pollinated and ¡even organic! seeds. I’m (and my son and dtr-in-law) working like a madman to bring all this back up to speed and surpass what once was our situation. Total self-sufficiency is somewhat out of my reach (and I’ve been at this a long time), but I see the need to progress to the degree possible for me and mine. Your situation is enviable, but ¿will it be enough? Who can say? That the bazaar is closed for an indeterminate time seems to me to be a certainty. But another certainty is that in one way or another a variation of it will arise. My hope is to position my family in a way that will enable us to be largely self-sufficient en extremis while developing the additional capacity to offer trade goods/services to acquire goods/services that are beyond our ability to produce. I agree with you that when all is said and done, no matter how severe conditions may be going forward here or there, we all have to eat. That’s a fact, Jack. But at the same time, it’s a beginning , not a finality, or at least so think I.
“this outcome is the fault of the consumer. You- if this applies to you- were the ones who made the decision to always buy your meat and produce at ‘cheap’ prices”
true. but do you expect anyone to behave in any other way? including yourself?
“paying a fair price”
the market is what it is.
No, the market is DIVERSE. You CHOSE to purchase what you purchased and how you purchased it. My wife and I have been buying as much organic as we can for the past 30 years. So have lots of other folks. Sure, we had to travel a bit sometimes to find what we wanted, and sure we had to pay more. But we all did this, and now, demand is so high that supply is higher and prices are far more competitive. THAT was a market-driven change, not a government-driven change. To HSF’s point, if consumers had rejected the plastic-wrapped stuff and had made the drive to a local farm, or had always been buying their produce from local farmers at farmer’s markets, etc., even if it cost more, the market for THOSE options would have grown, rather than the mass supermarkets, Walmart’s, etc.
I firmly believe that the government has purposely aided in the destruction of these “smaller” choices through subsidies, etc. because it is a lot easier to control a few hundred retailers than it is to control a few hundred thousand independent small businesses. It is much easier to demand payoffs from those same few hundred in return for more protectionist legislation, etc. to keep the competitors at bay.
If all that mattered was low price and convenience, the market would offer ONE choice. Obviously EVERY OTHER manufacturer, merchant, etc. who does NOT sell the cheapest, more convenient choice, believes that EVERYONE might possibly behave in another way. The fact that they are still in business means that PLENTY absolutely think differently.
“To HSF’s point, if consumers had …”
… done what he thought they should do? i.e. buy from him?
Gman – you are starting to be an asshole. Knock it off.
just pointing out what he’s saying. sorry to bust the bubble.
Yes, I do expect people to behave in ways other than pure economic utility.
Economics do not exist in the Natural world, it’s a human construct and as such it can easily be modified when it proves to be unworkable, overly complicated or it fails completely.
In light of recent developments are you unable to see how a system tied to the lowest price regardless of consequence is not necessarily the ‘the market is what it is’?
I have three local meat markets located within 10 miles of my house. I talked to the owner of one of them. His profits have doubled in the last month compared to last year. Prices to the farmer have dropped 20 to 40% for meat. He sources his meat locally and sells for about 10% higher than the local Walmart. The local Walmart can’t keep their shelves stocked. My local meat market can get all the meat it needs.
For now perhaps.
“‘It doesn’t compel meat or poultry producers to remain in production,’said Deborah Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University”
Well, Deb, compelling is done by govs and when last I checked, compulsory production isn’t a feature of the “American way”. Smacks of Stalin and Chairman Mao, doesn’t it?
“After all, do you plan to eat 42 percent less meat this year?”
If I have to, yeah, and I live in meat heaven. As the old saying has it, “I eat to live, not live to eat”. I’d rather not cut back on meat consumption, don’t have sufficient land to raise meat animals, but I do have enough to “farm” fish, snails and amaranth, so protein shortage will not be a problem.
Try taking “dramatic action” yourself and don’t hold your breath until “government” does.
“Pearlstein, a law professor at Yeshiva University”
Tribes woman?
“Tribes woman?”
the “yeshiva” does give it away.
snails? really?
No objection, I’ve just never heard of snail farming.
Please see reply to below comment by gman.
“I do have enough to “farm” … snails ….”
ew. maybe you could try lentils and peanuts instead?
Snails are good eating! I lived in Spain and Morocco in which they’re widely consumed. There are small restaurants and street stands (think of the roasted chestnuts guy) that specialize in them. The French usually eat them in a garlic butter sauce, the Spaniards and Moroccans in a tomato-based sauce. They’re a good protein source, and have the consistency of, say, an oyster on the half shell. Pretty easy to raise and maintain.
We love snails. You definitely need to give them a little fast for at least a day before you prepare them, but with garlic, white wine, sea salt, and butter?
Wow.
As far as I know, they’ve never really caught on in the USA in general. Here in Argentina, with a large population of folks of Spanish and Italian descent, you’d think they’d be popular, but they’re not. I simply don’t understand it, unless it’s simply because they’re not beef. You’re right: a day or two purge before boiling is a must, but they’re really easy to prepare. Don’t take up much space either. Mmmm!
“unless it’s simply because they’re not beef”
sounds like a great reason to me.
I can’t believe I actually agree with Doomster Mikey for once.
I read an article this morning that stated the meat packing operations were being outfitted with the latest in automation while the “sick” workers are locked down at home. In other words, the BOTS are moving in to take Joe six pack’s job at the plant.
If the government sends these workers a monthly stipend to go along with this move to automation, I’m guessing the workers won’t mind until that stipend is eroded by hyper-inflation. Hopefully, these workers will be gardening in their off time.
“In other words, the BOTS are moving in to take Joe six pack’s job at the plant”
be ready for more bone chips in the beef.