Problems in the food supply chain are gradually fermenting this week, affecting our daily lives.
Costco decided to begin to implement purchase restrictions on fresh meat products. Officially announced on Monday,Each customer can only buy up to three fresh meat products, Can be selected from beef, poultry and pork products. As with the purpose of restricting the purchase of water and paper towels last month, Costco hopes to ensure that more residents can buy the goods they want.
In addition to Costco, other supermarkets in the United States have also introduced new purchase policies.
Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, announced a similarRegulations.
Ralphs pork is limited to 2 servings 👇
Although stores limit how many products everyone can buy to prevent everyone from overstocking, the shortage of poultry, beef and pork continues...
Beginning in April, due to the need for a COVID-4 test by the processing plant, or a series of workers who are sick / take sick leaveThe slaughterhouse had to slow down the production line and was even forced to close.The United States killed 83,000 cattle last Friday.
John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, the largest meat company in the United States, said:"After the pork, beef and chicken factories are forced to close, even within a short period of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain."Tyson Foods closed three slaughterhouses last week and chose to partially open the fourth slaughterhouse to test workers ’work during the outbreak. Agricultural economists say,Due to the spread of this disease to cutting workshops where packaging equipment is dense, nearly one-third of the pork processing capacity and 1% of beef production capacity in the United States are offline.
An executive order issued on Tuesday said that closing a large beef processing plant could result in a reduction of 1000 million servings of beef per day.
In addition to the factory, workers' panic about illness made them choose to take leave or even absent from work.And this also affects the production capacity
In the past two months, about 20 workers have died and another 6,500 have been sick so far.The reason is that working conditions are narrow, and employees often stand side by side on the production line, causing the coronavirus to spread easily.
At a Tyson plant in Logansport, Indiana, nearly 900 workers tested positive for the virus, which accounted for 40% of the plant ’s workforce.
126 workers at Triumph Foods beef factory in St. Joseph, Missouri have now tested positive for coronavirus. After the test results of 92 asymptomatic employees were positive, the local health department began testing more than 2,200 workers at the plant. Now, the test results of another 32 employees with symptoms are positive, and they are waiting for the results of 1,500 other employees.
The JBS beef factory in Colorado was closed for two weeks during the outbreak. After reopening, the number of cases increased from 120 times to 245 in just three days.
©The Washiongton Post
"If buying meat on the market places more people at risk of life, does it make sense to maintain a normal supply of meat?" Menbere Tsegay, a worker at the Smithfield Food Factory in South Dakota, asked more than 800 workers there to confirm COVID-19 cases. Since mid-April, two people have died and the plant has been closed. The threat of this virus has caused workers like Tsegay (a single mother of 4 years old with four children) to weigh whether they want to endanger health through work. Tsegay said she was unwilling to do so. she says,"I'd rather be hungry and wait for the epidemic to go back to work."
US President Trump took administrative measures last week and ordered the meat processing plant to remain open,The reason is that there is growing concern that the increase in infection will affect the US food supply. The order uses the National Defense Production Law to classify meat processing as critical infrastructure in an attempt to prevent further shortages of chicken, pork and other meat already in short supply on supermarket shelves.
© theguardian.com
The move was welcomed by industry bosses and accused by trade unions. The American Food and Commercial Workers Union said it would seek help from the government to enforce the following rules:The workers are 6 feet apart and provide N95 masks for employees and can be tested for viruses.
At the same time, meat processing companies are already looking for changes to reduce risks by providing personal protective equipment, installing plexiglass shields between workers, and staggering shift start times to reduce congestion.
Poultry workers in the Fieldale Farms chicken processing plant.
© theguardian.com
Although US President Trump issued administrative measures to keep meat processing plants open, more workers said they would continue to stay at home until security measures were improved.
The meat supply chain in the United States is fully automated, and the production of meat is an assembly line operation. For pork production, from slaughtering, cutting, processing to final packaging, all rely on machines. When the factory is running at full speed, it can handle 1106 pigs per hour.
© meatmachinery.com
This high-rate production line has strict requirements for each link, and any chain loss will affect the supply chain.
First of all, the machine has requirements for the size of the animals,There is no way to handle too large or too small.This requires farmers to sell their animals in time at the right time. Due to the impact of the epidemic on the slaughterhouse, many factories have to be closed, and the number of factories that can continue to operate has been greatly reduced. At the same time, factories that reach the capacity limit cannot continue to accept more animals.It is estimated that 687,500 pigs cannot be slaughtered every week due to the closure of processing facilities.The farmer couldn't find a factory that could process the meat for them in time, but the animals had to eat every day. Too much food was too long to sell. Costs continue to increase, and profit returns cannot be obtained in time. This vicious cycle of oversupply has forced farmers to kill animals to control costs. So there are millions of pigs we saw on the newsHelpless tragic death.
Second, high-speed assembly line operations require the assistance of higher-density workers, and the requirement to maintain a personal distance of 6 feet in an outbreak makes full-speed production impossible.Take the example of a poultry factory. In other words, the increase in distance has led to a reduction in production speed. In addition, many meat production plants have to be closed due to the impact of the epidemic. The end result is that the number of products flowing into the market decreases.
At the same time, the requirement of home isolation and panic about the epidemic have made people more inclined to cook at home, and the demand for ingredients has increased over the same period, which has caused the meat to be sold out.The empty shelves aggravate the people ’s panic, and they will hoard more when they are available.
On the one hand, the supply of livestock exceeds the demand, on the other hand, the market is in short supply. The meat industry chain was thus destroyed.
In fact, there is a lot of meat in the frozen stocks of the United States.The USDA reported last week's stock of chicken meat at 9.21 million pounds and boneless beef at 4.67 million pounds, including minced meat and more high-quality grilled meats and steaks.However, using frozen beef, pork and chicken to make up for the shortage caused by the closure of meat processing plants is a challenge:This is because the packaging of many refrigerated products is used in restaurants and food services, which are basically large cut pieces and whole pieces of meat. Repacking into a product that can be used for home needs to be thawed-re-segmented-re-packed in one step .
U.S. frozen beef, pork, and chicken reserves 👇
And repacking frozen meat is also prone to food safety problems. Therefore, experts do not recommend refreezing the meat, they must be thawed and sold. Most of the employees who can do these things are those meat processing factories ... However, if the epidemic intensifies the shortage of meat in supermarkets, this option has to be activated. Frozen meat may appear in supermarkets.At least, we will not eat without meat.
On the one hand, it is the daily meat demand of American families, and on the other hand, the safety of the lives of tens of thousands of meat processing factory employees. What we can do isFollow the purchase restrictions of supermarkets, buy rationally and not waste.It ’s also great to eat more fruits and vegetables ~
Text, Editing | Jiang Ziya, Crayfish
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