There’s not a shortage of livestock or meat in the U.S., but there is a processing and distribution problem limiting available products for retailers. “We always have this false sense of security that we have meat in cold storage and we do, but not much,” said Don Close, senior animal protein analyst, Rabo AgriFinance. “Collectively, there’s two weeks supply of meat in cold storage. On the beef side, we typically have four to six days of product in storage. That’s really not an insurance policy as it is a residual supply of product moving through the system.” With a new executive order in place, Close is hopeful plants can open back up for processing in the next two weeks. However, once the plants are running, there could be a slowdown in slaughter of pork, beef and poultry to accommodate new spacing requirements on the line. “If the six foot spacing requirements are the new reality, plants won’t be able to have the number of employees on those fabrication lines we’ve had,” said Close. “That by itself will slow output.”
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