Just a few days ago we marveled as wholesale beef prices had soared over 60% from their February lows to a record $331 per 100 pounds. Well, that was then, because today alone, the wholesale price soared by 8.6% or $32.60 to a new all time high of $410.05, almost doubling in less than a month.
The reason: an unprecedented collapse of the nation’s food supply chain as over a dozen meat processing plants have been shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Beef prices are soaring even after Trump issued an executive order to address meat shortages, however with food workers scared and unwilling to return to work, Trump’s attempt to normalize prices has backfired, because all it has achieved was a frantic scramble by consumers to hoard beef resulting in even bigger shortages and higher prices.
Call it a bacon run.
As a result of the wave of panic-shopping at supermarkets, more grocery stores are imposing limits on meat purchases. On Friday, we reported that supermarket chain Kroger said that it has put “purchase limits” on ground beef and fresh pork at some of its stores following growing concerns over meat shortages due to coronavirus-induced supply disruptions. Other large grocers said they expect to be out of stock on different types of cuts soon.
Sure enough, on Monday Costco joined Kroger, announced it was limiting customers to three packages of meat.
Product Limitations
Costco has implemented limits on certain items to help ensure more members are able to purchase merchandise they want and need. Our buyers and suppliers are working hard to provide essential, high demand merchandise as well as everyday favorites.
Fresh meat purchases are temporarily limited to a total of 3 items per member among the beef, pork and poultry products.
Most if not all other supermarkets will follow suit in enforcing similar strict purchase limits.
With Trump’s EO failing to ease the shortage, and beef supply chains crippled, it is unclear when or how the beef shortage will be resolved, even as prices explode with each passing day, making beef a luxury for America’s 30 million suddenly unemployed who don’t know when their next paycheck will arrive.
While so far the food crisis is limited to beef and to a lesser extent pork (whose price rose to the highest in 6 years today), how long before all other food supply chains are similarly crippled resulting in the kind of food hyperinflation that sparked the Arab Spring protests and rebellions which culminated with overthrown governments across much of northern Africa and the Middle East?
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For anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together:
This is not a crisis. At least not yet.
1. The average American east far too much meat. I don’t care if you want to, just be aware that that a person does not need to eat 12 ounces of meat per sitting. 4-6 ounces is all that’s necessary.
2. Try something else morons. Like lamb. Or fish. Or duck. Or rabbit. Yeah, yeah, I know…if you live in a food “desert” than these things are probably not available to you. Chances are you ate like crap before and you’ll continue to eat like crap now.
3. There are local producers that can ship fresh, high-quality meat to you. It may cost you a bit more, but the quality if far superior to anything you can get from a supermarket. And again, see number 1 and just eat a regular portion instead of gorging.
5. I call BS. This sounds to me like more fear mongering. When I read the stories of the meat plant workers being tested, I was wondering WHY they were being tested as it seems the majority were asymptomatic. Seems like another ploy for these large corporations to get a bail out. And if they are owned by China, which by the way, many of them are, well in my opinion too fucking bad for them, no bailout.
6. You can join a club or co-op to get a “share” of a cow or pig. These are springing up everywhere, you just need to look for them. These are similar to the local producers that don’t have you join a club but you still get good quality meat.
7. Perhaps loosen some restrictions on local restaurants selling what they have already in their freezers that can sell to the public.
8. How is it even possible that workers are “too scared” to go back to work. Again, I call BS. Almost every single person I have spoken too WANTS TO GO BACK TO WORK.
Agreed, I’ve cut back on meat and portion size, but still eat it regularly.
Umm, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t lamb and rabbit meat, duck poultry and fish seafood. Lamb by any definition is meat, I’d think.
I guess most folks equate “meat” with beef and pork. Twelve oz is a typical portion?. Jeez, it’s like Argentina up there! Four ounces is typically enough for me in one sitting, many times for the whole day.
Glad to learn folks will be turning away from supermarkets and buying from local producers. I hope along with Mr. Kunstler that this is the look of the future.
Hiya Pup,
Miss the point much? This is a crisis because this ‘crisis’ was created, no matter what you think people’s diets should consist of, or of how they can adjust to this created supply chain implosion.
Yeah, I’m ok, it’s just a flesh wound and I still have one leg to hop on… for the moment. lol
I know, always with the negative waves, I’m working on that. So welcome to the new normal too right.
I think I’m going to go all in on dry ice manufactures. And I hope you get back to work soon too.
There’s lots of cattle in the pastures around here. The bottleneck is meat processing which entails killing the cow and cutting her up into portions for cooking. There is no need to panic or panic buy, like toilet paper, there will be more down the line. Right now we have a manufactured crisis that’s pushing an agenda and covering up an economic collapse and simultaneously allowing the usual suspects to rob us blind, again.
As to eating meat, huge wads of meat aren’t necessary for good health. Treat meat as a condiment rather than the main course, eat your veggies and focus more on plant products while you starve the beast that is manufactured high prices. The ranchers will cull the herds if they can’t afford to feed the animals, just like they do in a drought, so maybe more animals will be slaughtered and now it looks like there will be more independent butchers doing that.
Go to the coast and drop a line in the water, fish are good for you. You don’t have to go wipe out deer herds or other species just yet, in fact doing that now is really stupid because if there is a real shortage down the road and all the wildlife has been killed off, well then you might have to eat your neighbor. Or vice versa….
Cynical I might be but I cannot stop marveling how over time the clusters of sickness have been following a pattern that might have been mapped out by a strategist trying to create the maximum fear.
The coincidence of infection rates and deaths in the most highly populous urban areas governed by LibTards hasn’t been lost on people paying attention, either.
People are just now catching onto the fact the virus was active months before the knee-jerk overreaction of government happened in mid-March. I was sick multiple times in February with a nastier than normal cold and viral conjunctivitis, something I hadn’t had since I was a kid.
They’re not fooling me. The government wrecked the supply chains and it’s on their heads.
“clusters of sickness”
clusters of reported sickness.
A friend went to Wendy’s fast food the other day to get a burger. They were out of beef and said they haven’t had a shipment in two weeks. They had also been out of salads for two weeks. They only had chicken.
Did they still have the fecal burger that Stucky usually orders?
This is how you work a system:
1. create a fake panic, flash subliminal pictures of explosive diarrhea onto MSM evening news,
a toilet paper shortage is sure to follow (note, same people creating these panics are front running the TP stocks)
2. Issue a 2% refund check to the plebes, while paying yourself and your buddies 98% of the cash register, so that they will not sharpen their pitch forks.
3. once money is in hand of plebes, print news stories everywhere that meat packers are closing due to imaginary virus (when, in fact, it is ICE that has arrested 90% of the illegal work force of these plants)
another panic buying of all the meat products at your grocery store is sure to follow.
4. once a new price floor is achieved in the meat market, all beef/poultry will now be 20% higher, permanently, and these hungry overweight land whales can never get enough colon clogging protein in their digestive systems. Their guts have superseded their brains in the decision making process
5. new class of morbidly obese scooter people now require 2x toilet paper than before, now go to step 1 and repeat.
What comes next? Outbreaks at breweries?
why chance it. stock up.
Brew your own. I do. For about $30 I can brew 5 gallons of fresh beer at home.
Where I live 24 twelve ounce bottles of decent beer costs over $40. Part of the problem is our local distributors. I was getting a 15 pack of Founders canned lager brewed in Michigan at less than a dollar per can retail last summer, but not now. The retailers around here seem fixated on selling large amounts of low quality domestic beer, expensive IPA, or so-called “craft” because the profit margin is higher.
People don’t seem to know the difference ….
This Plandemic is nothing but The Green New Deal without the required legislation. One cannot compare the two without seeing the obvious points of agreement.
Plandemic is just another means to achieve the goals.
Hmmm….,see hunting season opening very early this year,choice of the people,not the kings decree.
hunting permits are closely regulated to maintain game populations. if hunting doubles what will be left of the game populations?
Long Pig will still be readily available.
And I guess you missed the articles bemoaning the lack of hunters, leading to excess car/deer crashes and suburban gardens being eaten.
That’s OK, enough speed-beef around here, and enough rounds to keep the Citiots at bay…
“Long Pig will still be readily available”
cannibalism will last three months at most.
living off the wild game will last considerably less. indian tribes would fight genocidal battles over who got to hunt where.
There’s a never ending slew of narratives to convince people to continue their belief in our current virus hoax.
Wait until this time next year, by which time Boobus Americanus will discover that we are in an economic collapse rivaling that which took down the Soviet Union. We’ll be hearing about and watching videos of lowlifes being hung from tree limbs and lamp posts.
Well…If 4 to 6 ounces of meat is enough then I know who not to invite to my cook-out when the steaks average 24 or more ounces .
Interesting thing is that at the other end of the chain, the Cow/calf producer is taking it in the shorts because of the back log now sitting in the feedlots and no place for his calf crop to go. The lynch pin is the packing house and with that screwed up one end of the market has a supply glut and the other end a supply deficit. This will eventually settle out but times like these are why it’s better to go straight to the source (the rancher) for the product and avoid the middle men.
The hedonic adjustment away from beef is to eat crickets
Every damn day its more of a leftists wet dream out there
not about meat but about another commodity that we need badly–
oil prices are recovering & crude is expected to double in price by summer ’21 —