Have you noticed the shelves at your grocery store looking less and less full?
It’s happening.
I couldn’t find Rice-a-Roni today, of all silly things. But even worse, the meat shelves were looking rather bare and picked over and there were “limits” on the amount of meat and poultry I could buy.
Well, it turns out that there’s a massive meat shortage looming on the horizon thanks to the virus lockdowns.
Time to stock up, if you can, for you and your family.
Americans could start to see shortages of pork, chicken and beef on grocery shelves as soon as May as major packing plants swept by the coronavirus remain shuttered and the nation’s massive stockpiles of frozen meat begin to dwindle.
Any empty shelves to date have been the result of bumps in the supply chain, with stores being unable to restock as quickly as customers are buying. But bacon, pork chops and ham could be the first to face actual shortages: The amount of frozen pork in storage nationwide — more than 621 million pounds — dropped 4 percent from March to April, the USDA reported this week. Slaughter rates are down 25 percent, and 400,000 animals are backed up in slaughterhouses.
And with meat plants of all kinds operating at 60 percent of capacity, shortages loom for beef and poultry as well. That could also lead to higher prices and a financial squeeze for farmers, who are collecting less per animal slaughtered.
But the pipeline bringing meat from farms to stores is slowing. The dip in daily pork slaughter rates “is troubling, especially for producers,” said Scott Brown, a University of Missouri agricultural economist. “If these keep declining at the rate we have seen recently then we need to worry,” he added. [Politico]
This also might be a good time to start cooking with other proteins like beans and eggs. Think about meals you can prepare that don’t use a lot of meat and rely on other proteins. Also, canned meats, like tuna fish are good. And believe it or not, but canned white-meat chicken makes some of the best chicken salad ever.
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This piece was written by Missy Crane on April 24, 2020. It originally appeared in WayneDupree.com and is used by permission.
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