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Food Supply Disruptions - Government Response

Theoretical intervention, to me, would involve various National Guard, Army Corp of Engineers, and reserves activations.

Temporary nationalization of food processors and logistics infrastructure.

Access control implemented at these places. Isolated facilities for housing workers to prevent contamination of facilities and personnel from outside because one of them wanted a haircut (if you want a trim, sit in this chair and Corporal Buzzcut will be with you in a moment).

Daily testing of all personnel coming off shift, verified by return at next shift. Various other screenings when coming on shift followed by showers and change of clothes freshly returned from *insert appropriate decontamination protocol here*. Air conditioned tent cities are a thing. We find ways to let soldiers on the opposite side of the planet talk to their families in an active war zone, we should be able to pull this off just outside a typical Midwestern cow-town for crying out loud.

I'd even be "generous" and allow workers to object and walk away. Point being it is all or nothing. I hear there's lots of people desperate to get some work hours in all over the place, let's see how many will put their (desire for) money where their (loud, profanity-laden) mouths are.

Anyone disrupting these efforts can be thrown in tightly packed cages with poor sanitary conditions, denied toothbrushes, and sleep on concrete with foil emergency blankets (again, we have operating models of this type of facility). Present them with a document in dizzyingly complex legalese (effectively a foreign language) and have them select an option at the bottom without access to a lawyer while someone shouts at them a lot (okay, okay, I'm going in a cathartic direction, I admit that :9).

Obviously this needs a lot more brainstorming and consideration.

The overall direction is the plan should be one where "we are not messing around in muddled middle ground worrying about people's fragile sensibilities."

18,000 variations of "anarchy is 3 missed meals away" uttered across human history are not just woeful expressions of insignificant people battling a moment of despair. It speaks to a real and dangerous fact of how fast our very tenuous adherence to cooperative efforts can unravel.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Theoretical intervention, to me, would involve various National Guard, Army Corp of Engineers, and reserves activations.

Temporary nationalization of food processors and logistics infrastructure.

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They're welcome to my food processor. I bought the damn thing 12 years ago, used it mebbe half a dozen times, and it's been in the way back of a cabinet under the kitchen counter ever since.

Turns out I'm happier with the results I get from my cutting board and a good chef's knife.
 
quadraginta said:
They're welcome to my food processor. I bought the damn thing 12 years ago, used it mebbe half a dozen times, and it's been in the way back of a cabinet under the kitchen counter ever since.

Turns out I'm happier with the results I get from my cutting board and a good chef's knife.
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I think I've had two of those in the 30 years I've been in this house. Like you, used maybe half a dozen times. Then each time when cleaning it, realizing that it takes 10 times more effort to go through that whole cycle than using my knife and board. It's just not a time or effort saver for a solo person.

One thing I initially regretted getting but changed my mind on was my Ninja Foodi. It takes up a lot of space but I use it a lot (dehydrating, pressure cooking, air frying), and it's easy to clean.
 
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eeyore1954 said:
Exceptthat so far variety and availability has been good.
I am sure there are some local exceptions.
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I'll be in Costco tomorrow, and I know I will be restricted to three packages of meat, and while that is mostly inconvenience as opposed to deprivation, it does have some repercussions. By that form of rationing, it forces people to make more grocery store trips, which means more opportunities for spreading the virus.

What worries me most is that the cost goes up. Not a huge deal for me. I can afford it. Not everyone can, though. Somebody, indeed a whole lot of somebodies, are doing without.


And I know that there are non-meat protein sources, but every time I see an article about that I think, "Let them eat cake."


ETA: Still, to clarify, I won't say that Trump is responsible for anything horrible with regards to meat and/or food. There are problems, but they don't seem awful. I can't say there's anything obvious that the government ought to be doing about it.
 
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Nothing horrible.

Just people dying for unnecessary reasons to keep the reduced flow that is available on your plate.

The food is, after all, still on the plate. Doesn't "seem awful" at all. Nope.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Nothing horrible.

Just people dying for unnecessary reasons to keep the reduced flow that is available on your plate.

The food is, after all, still on the plate. Doesn't "seem awful" at all. Nope.
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Trump isn't responsible for that, though.

It is widely stated that his invocation of the Defense Production Act forced the slaughterhouses to stay open, but it isn't true. It was kind of weird that way. It was very widely reported, uncritically even, but it simply didn't happen. The DPA can't actually do that.

At the same time there was some sort of liability waiver, but there was considerable debate about whether it meant very little, or absolutely nothing. Really, his big executive order on the subject was much ado about nothing, or at least, much ado about not very much.
 
Meadmaker said:
Trump isn't responsible for that, though.



It is widely stated that his invocation of the Defense Production Act forced the slaughterhouses to stay open, but it isn't true. It was kind of weird that way. It was very widely reported, uncritically even, but it simply didn't happen. The DPA can't actually do that.



At the same time there was some sort of liability waiver, but there was considerable debate about whether it meant very little, or absolutely nothing. Really, his big executive order on the subject was much ado about nothing, or at least, much ado about not very much.
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I'll provisionally accept that he's not responsible for that specific reason.

Which is miles away from he's not responsible at all.
 
Meadmaker said:
I'll be in Costco tomorrow, and I know I will be restricted to three packages of meat, and while that is mostly inconvenience as opposed to deprivation, it does have some repercussions. By that form of rationing, it forces people to make more grocery store trips, which means more opportunities for spreading the virus.
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That rationing is imposed to stop people from hoarding (like with toilet paper) not because there is any real shortage. What good alternative would there be? Vouchers for how much people can buy of what?
Where I am there is a limit on two of any like item and that can be an issue if you have 5 mouths to feed (especially two males in their 20s). I do go to the store more than once a week.
The price of food has gone up slightly but the price of gas and other things have gone down. What i notice is a few grocery chains don't have good sales like they used to. I assume they know people can't be that picky now. I will remember which chains were good in this respect.
 
eeyore1954 said:
That rationing is imposed to stop people from hoarding (like with toilet paper) not because there is any real shortage. What good alternative would there be? Vouchers for how much people can buy of what?
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Where the heck are you getting your information from? Meat supply is down. Slaughterhouses are closed. Not as much is being produced.

This isn't fake news. Is there a shortage in the sense of pending starvation? No. Is there less than there used to be, and less than normal demand? Yes, absolutely.

Also, as with toilet paper, the mix of products for home consumption is different than the mix of products that is normally available for restaurant and other commercial use. Home use has increased. Commercial use has gone down. That makes it difficult to keep up with home demand, and difficult to use product that was destined for commercial demand.

As I said earlier, I won't blame Trump for a horrible situation, because the situation isn't horrible. It isn't good, though. I thought it would be worse than it is, but it isn't awful. It's just not what we have become accustomed to, and hoarding is not the issue. It's a problem of production.
 
alfaniner said:
<snip>

One thing I initially regretted getting but changed my mind on was my Ninja Foodi. It takes up a lot of space but I use it a lot (dehydrating, pressure cooking, air frying), and it's easy to clean.
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I had to look that up. It certainly inspired my gadget lust.

The $200 sticker price quenched it a bit, but not enough to keep me from putting it on my 'for later' list. :p
 
Meadmaker said:
I'll be in Costco tomorrow, and I know I will be restricted to three packages of meat, and while that is mostly inconvenience as opposed to deprivation, it does have some repercussions. By that form of rationing, it forces people to make more grocery store trips, which means more opportunities for spreading the virus.

<snip>
Click to expand...


When I went shopping last week the Harris Teeter here restricted me to no more than two of the same item in the meat section. Among other things, I got one five lb. bag of chicken breasts, one spiral cut ham, and one each of several different kinds of sausages. Probably twenty pounds of meat or more.

I could have gotten two of each, but I needed a little bit of space in my freezer for things that weren't meat, too.

There wasn't any limit on the frozen sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, or the frozen meatballs, but that didn't inspire me to load my cart with those, either.
 
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Meadmaker said:
Where the heck are you getting your information from? Meat supply is down. Slaughterhouses are closed. Not as much is being produced.

This isn't fake news. Is there a shortage in the sense of pending starvation? No. Is there less than there used to be, and less than normal demand? Yes, absolutely.

Also, as with toilet paper, the mix of products for home consumption is different than the mix of products that is normally available for restaurant and other commercial use. Home use has increased. Commercial use has gone down. That makes it difficult to keep up with home demand, and difficult to use product that was destined for commercial demand.

As I said earlier, I won't blame Trump for a horrible situation, because the situation isn't horrible. It isn't good, though. I thought it would be worse than it is, but it isn't awful. It's just not what we have become accustomed to, and hoarding is not the issue. It's a problem of production.
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And yet, we've had chicken producers sell forty lb. boxes of chicken at less than a dollar per lb. out of the backs of tractor trailers around here because they couldn't put enough in the grocery stores. They announce where the trucks are going to be a day or two ahead of time. People line up hours ahead of time and the cops have to provide traffic control. Because they couldn't get rid of it fast enough without those commercial customers.

It isn't all cut up and packaged 'real purdy', but it's still forty lb. boxes of chicken by the tractor trailer load.
 
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I just ate a really delicious steak that had been in the freezer a couple of weeks. I don't CARE what it cost, I'm old and financially secure. And the shelves haven't been particularly bare.
And I bought gasoline for US$1.429/gallon. Yeah that had a one dollar discount from the store loyalty program but still pretty damn cheap. Heck, the taxes are 67.8 cents!
 
Trebuchet said:
I just ate a really delicious steak that had been in the freezer a couple of weeks. I don't CARE what it cost, I'm old and financially secure. And the shelves haven't been particularly bare.
And I bought gasoline for US$1.429/gallon. Yeah that had a one dollar discount from the store loyalty program but still pretty damn cheap. Heck, the taxes are 67.8 cents!
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We used one of our three item allotment from Costco to buy a package of filet mignon. Same basic reasoning. Fifty bucks. Four steaks. Who cares, because in normal times we would go to Outback once every month or two and spend 100 dollars on four steaks.

But for people who have to stretch to buy hamburger, hamburger at 5.50 a pound is pretty unfortunate.
 
Meadmaker said:
We used one of our three item allotment from Costco to buy a package of filet mignon. Same basic reasoning. Fifty bucks. Four steaks. Who cares, because in normal times we would go to Outback once every month or two and spend 100 dollars on four steaks.

But for people who have to stretch to buy hamburger, hamburger at 5.50 a pound is pretty unfortunate.
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The last couple times i went to Costco, all the economical cuts of meat were sold out. The cases usually filled with ground turkey and chicken breasts were instead filled with expensive cuts of steak, fish filets, and lobster.

Supply of more everyday meats seem to be short near me.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The last couple times i went to Costco, all the economical cuts of meat were sold out. The cases usually filled with ground turkey and chicken breasts were instead filled with expensive cuts of steak, fish filets, and lobster.

Supply of more everyday meats seem to be short near me.
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They had ground beef yesterday. It was 88% lean at 5.50/pound, but I was there during "vulnerable shopper hours", so I don't know what it was like once regular business hours opened.

I read that Costco gets deliveries and stocks products continuously as opposed to waiting for overnight hours. It could be that first thing in the morning was the very worst time to try and get meat. As it was, the stock was pretty bad.

And I know that timing wasn't the only problem. They had changed the size of the meat counter itself. It was about half the size of its former self, with the other half being replaced by prepared foods.

As I said before, it isn't horrible. We aren't starving, but this is not normal, and it isn't due to consumer behavior. In this case, I don't know if there is anything the government can or should do about it. I just hope they are looking to the future and making sure that these inconveniences don't turn into crises.
 
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