泰森食品董事长约翰·泰森警告说新冠疫情迫使该公司关闭全国门店。泰森强调，消费者会受到牵连，因为“零售店的商品有限，只有在目前关闭的门店重新开门以后问题才能得到解决。”

If you thought the toilet paper shortage was bad, just wait. Meat may be next.

 

John H. Tyson, chairman of the board of Tyson Foods, warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing the company to shutter¹ locations across the country as some of its 100,000 workers have fallen ill.

 

“This means one thing,” he wrote. “The food supply chain is vulnerable. 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.”

 

The ripple² effect will make its way to consumers, Tyson noted³, as “There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”

 

The Tyson plant in Waterloo, Iowa, was one that closed, having been linked to 182 cases of the coronavirus, which is nearly half the entire county’s total. In addition to that facility, pork processing plants for Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and JBS in Worthington, Minnesota, also closed indefinitely earlier this April. These three plants make up about 15% of pork production in the U.S.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported record-high red meat, beef, and pork production in March. However, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, representatives of more than 250,000 industry workers, slaughter⁴ capacity is trending down 25% for pork and 10% for beef as 13 plants have closed. Demand from consumers is rising as many are sheltering at home.

 

In a report, Julie Niederhoff, an associate professor of supply chain management at Syracuse University, was sanguine⁵. “We’re not going to run out of food. We’re going to run out of maybe your one particular favorite foo

The USDA’s data suggests that Americans eat more than the recommended amounts of meat, eggs, and nuts. Niederhoff asserted that the state of the food chain remains⁶ “robust,” despite disruption to a particular brand or type of food.

 

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