Food Supply Disruptions - Government Response

[Meadmaker]

I've been watching it develop. So far, food supply disruptions have been largely a matter of convenience. Your favorite product is out of stock. At the beginning, there was "stocking up", which looks a lot like hoarding, but really it's just a rather common sense reaction to the fact that you don't want to go to the grocery store for a few weeks. That should go away, eventually.

Now, though, we're hearing of actual, pending, shortfalls, especially for meat. I won't link to a specific article, but try putting "meat" in a google news search. What you will see is some bleak forecasts.

Yesterday, Tyson Foods bought a full page ad in the New York Times to talk about supply chain disruption.

This could be bad.

Meanwhile, farmers are actually destroying crops and destroying animals.


So, can the government do anything about this? Should they?

I honestly don't know the answer to the first question. How do you increase slaughterhouse capacity? It would seem that at the very least, government could provide testing to workers at key food processing centers, so that workers could be sent home before they have a chance to infect lots of other workers. Is there anything else they could do?

The answer to the second question rather obviously depends on the answer to the first question. However, if the answer to the first question is yes, then I say the answer to the second question is yes. It's food. We have to eat. The "free market" won't take care of this problem.

Is government doing anything about it now? Is anyone looking into this problem?

One thing I am certain of is that the solution is not to give someone money to compensate them for their losses. I can't eat money. I just read today that in this time of meat shortfalls, one facility had to kill two million chickens. If the farmers are compensated for their lost money on raising those chickens, I still can't eat the chicken. I'm not saying that we absolutely shouldn't give anyone money in this situation, merely that doing so does nothing to solve the problem.

And if real food shortages develop, should we blame Donald Trump? Yes. That's the point of having a government, to do something about the really big problems that private enterprise can't handle. To be fair to The Donald, if I can't buy meat real soon, I'll also throw some hate toward congressional leaders, who have less power to act than the President has, but if they are not at least making a whole bunch of noise about it, they really should share some of the blame.

So, here's a thread specifically for issues related to food supply, and whose fault it is if there isn't enough of it. I put it in USA politics because I anticipate that "whose fault is it" will be a significant part of the discussion, and because I am particularly interested in the situation in the USA. However, even better than the "whose fault is it" discussion would be information about what could, realistically, be done. Then we can get around to blaming politicians for not doing it.

Or, is it too much hype? Other than having to pay and addition 20% or so for meat, is there really a big problem here? Is it just hype, or will there be actual food shortages, with accompanying malnutrition?

 

[Darat]

But why should’ve there be disruption? Social distancing can be used in factories and the like, in areas where it can’t be avoided employees can be provided with PPE.

 

[crescent]

This article goes into some pretty good detail on the issue:

USDA let millions of pounds of food rot while food-bank demand soared

Part of the issue is the change in consumers - far, far fewer purchases from restaurants and other food service type places. Supply system not set up to rejigger distribution to retail.

Fresh food seems to be the biggest issue. Lots and lots of people will eat food made from fresh produce and meat that is cooked on-site - in restaurants and cafeterias. But not at home....

For its own part, USDA has been pretty slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

 

[Meadmaker]

Part of the problem is unavoidable. Under the circumstances, people want food that has a long shelf life. In a sane, normal, world, I would frequently stop at a grocery store on the way home and buy the onions or peppers or mushrooms to make the meal I was planning. Obviously, I'm not going to do that now. Meanwhile, that increases demand for other products, because the calories have to come from somewhere. So, I can't blame government for everything.

In the early days of the epidemic, there were meat shortages that were a distribution issue. Everyone wanted weeks worth of food that they could fill their freezers with so they didn't have to return. I don't blame government for that.

However, now we have different issues, and government should have seen some of these coming, and could have done something about it. Testing and PPE at food suppliers, at taxpayer expense, would have been a very good idea. And if the FDA failed to adapt, I blame Trump, because the buck stops in the oval office. This was not hard to see coming. That's what task forces are for. Part of their job is anticipate problems and provide solutions before those problems become crises.

 

[Distracted1]

I've been watching it develop. So far, food supply disruptions have been largely a matter of convenience. Your favorite product is out of stock. At the beginning, there was "stocking up", which looks a lot like hoarding, but really it's just a rather common sense reaction to the fact that you don't want to go to the grocery store for a few weeks. That should go away, eventually.

Now, though, we're hearing of actual, pending, shortfalls, especially for meat. I won't link to a specific article, but try putting "meat" in a google news search. What you will see is some bleak forecasts.

Yesterday, Tyson Foods bought a full page ad in the New York Times to talk about supply chain disruption.

This could be bad.

Meanwhile, farmers are actually destroying crops and destroying animals.


So, can the government do anything about this? Should they?

I honestly don't know the answer to the first question. How do you increase slaughterhouse capacity? It would seem that at the very least, government could provide testing to workers at key food processing centers, so that workers could be sent home before they have a chance to infect lots of other workers. Is there anything else they could do?

The answer to the second question rather obviously depends on the answer to the first question. However, if the answer to the first question is yes, then I say the answer to the second question is yes. It's food. We have to eat. The "free market" won't take care of this problem.

Is government doing anything about it now? Is anyone looking into this problem?

One thing I am certain of is that the solution is not to give someone money to compensate them for their losses. I can't eat money. I just read today that in this time of meat shortfalls, one facility had to kill two million chickens. If the farmers are compensated for their lost money on raising those chickens, I still can't eat the chicken. I'm not saying that we absolutely shouldn't give anyone money in this situation, merely that doing so does nothing to solve the problem.

And if real food shortages develop, should we blame Donald Trump? Yes. That's the point of having a government, to do something about the really big problems that private enterprise can't handle. To be fair to The Donald, if I can't buy meat real soon, I'll also throw some hate toward congressional leaders, who have less power to act than the President has, but if they are not at least making a whole bunch of noise about it, they really should share some of the blame.

So, here's a thread specifically for issues related to food supply, and whose fault it is if there isn't enough of it. I put it in USA politics because I anticipate that "whose fault is it" will be a significant part of the discussion, and because I am particularly interested in the situation in the USA. However, even better than the "whose fault is it" discussion would be information about what could, realistically, be done. Then we can get around to blaming politicians for not doing it.

Or, is it too much hype? Other than having to pay and addition 20% or so for meat, is there really a big problem here? Is it just hype, or will there be actual food shortages, with accompanying malnutrition?

Could "making a lot of noise about it" be seen as inciting to panic at this point?
Especially when so many of us are already so on-edge from the quarantine?

It seems pretty easy to imagine that moments after the "meat crisis" hits the news in force, it will become impossible to find any at the grocery stores.

We can all have a nervous laugh at idiots fighting over toilet paper- but fighting over food steps things up another uncomfortable notch.

 

[Trebuchet]

The meat packing industry, of course, has a long history of abusing its workers.
I have a cousin who was general manager of a packing plant owned by a big company. Hmm why not name them: Iowa Beef Packers. He was in my state, so my parents decided to go visit him. They came back extremely upset. He was not only abusive to his wife, but openly bragged about hiring illegal aliens then making "anonymous" calls to Immigration to trigger raids just before they were due to be paid.

His younger sister is the one who died of Covid-19 recently.

 

[Meadmaker]

Could "making a lot of noise about it" be seen as inciting to panic at this point?

There's nothing wrong with yelling fire in a crowded movie house if the movie house is on fire.

 

[Distracted1]

The meat packing industry, of course, has a long history of abusing its workers.
I have a cousin who was general manager of a packing plant owned by a big company. Hmm why not name them: Iowa Beef Packers. He was in my state, so my parents decided to go visit him. They came back extremely upset. He was not only abusive to his wife, but openly bragged about hiring illegal aliens then making "anonymous" calls to Immigration to trigger raids just before they were due to be paid.

His younger sister is the one who died of Covid-19 recently.

I was raised in a largely Hispanic area in Detroit (SouthWest side FWIW) the vast majority of my friends were Immigrants from Mexico (and other Latin American countries), some clearly here "illegally", others naturalized citizens or first-generation born in the USA.

A common thread was the prevalence of available employment for them in food-processing industries (Detroit was not a hub for this kind of industry, but there was still a good deal of it around), so much so that some families I knew would have relatives from Mexico come to stay with them for months at a time to work at such places- then return to Mexico for a while.

The link between immigrants and food production was apparent to even me (a city boy) and I don't think it has changed much over the subsequent decades. With the current administration (and to a lesser extent, probably any administration) the immigrant-food link is going to inject some pretty divisive politics into any food crisis that may be arising from the situation we find ourselves in.

 

[Distracted1]

There's nothing wrong with yelling fire in a crowded movie house if the movie house is on fire.

Maybe.
To belabor the analogy though, is it okay to yell "fire" when you only have a vague impression of the smell of smoke?

 

[Meadmaker]

Maybe.
To belabor the analogy though, is it okay to yell "fire" when you only have a vague impression of the smell of smoke?

I'm trusting that the congressional leaders I would want to make noise about the problem would actually look into the problem and verify that it's a real problem before yelling "fire".

I'm assuming that some of them are actually looking into things other than how to take advantage of verbal gaffes at press conferences.

And, that's probably wishful thinking, but if so I'll still say they suck if they aren't being proactive on the problem.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Here in Germany a bizarre element of the "lockdown" is that we literally have had all the time since then fantastic sunny weather with clear blue sky and no rain at all, while we depend on rain a lot. We all look like Cubans right now if we have a balcony (like I do). While April is proverbially the month where weather changes faster than your underpants. So now if nothing changes quickly we are heading into a serious drought that will endanger our food safety (which being a small densly populated country has always been in danger as Uncle Adolf and his "lebensraum" knew). I'm starting to get a bit worried about that, also because they just flew in around 80,000 untested people from very-eastern Europe to help to keep the machine alive.

 

[Meadmaker]

Here in Germany a bizarre element of the "lockdown" is that we have literally have had all the time since then fantastic sunny weather with clear blue sky and no rain at all, while we depend on rain a lot. We all look like Cubans right now if we have a balcony (like I do). While April is proverbially the month where weather changes faster than your underpants. So now if nothing changes quickly we are heading into a serious drought that will endanger our food safety (which being a small densly populated country has always been in danger as Uncle Adolf and his "lebensraum" knew). I'm starting to get a bit worried about that, also because they just flew in around 80,000 untested people from very-eastern Europe to help to keep the machine alive.

So, the drought part isn't exactly the government's fault, but it seems like the government is facing the same sort of problems with food processing and workers, but they are actually taking steps to prevent it from becoming a crisis. Did I get that right?

 

[Horatius]

I'm expecting major problems with anything that requires a lot of labor, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. We need a lot of people to harvest these sorts of things, and, as mentioned above, they tend to be immigrants, which will be its own problem this year. They live and work in conditions in which maintaining social distancing will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Lots of those workers will likely decide to just stay home this year, and the rest will have an increased chance of catching the virus, requiring shutdowns of the whole operation for days or weeks, at a time when you simply can't afford to shut down. Harvests are a time-critical operation after all. Leave it too long, and the food rots in the field, freezes in an untimely frost, or gets eaten by pests.

That's not to say we'll starve. Agriculture that is heavily industrialized will still work. One guy running a combine harvester can feed a lot of people, and it's the sort of work that would be possible to do while maintaining social distancing.

So we'll be fed, even if it's a bit less than we're used to, and bit more monotonous. I imagine it will be like when my mother was growing up in Newfoundland. They got one orange each on Christmas morning, and that was pretty much all the fresh fruit they saw all winter.

Of course, a hell of a lot of people will scream their heads off about this, and act like eating their daily bread plain is the worst oppression ever suffered in all of history.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Other than having to pay and addition 20% or so for meat, is there really a big problem here? Is it just hype, or will there be actual food shortages, with accompanying malnutrition?

There is no problem. Lots of people already die every year due to malnutrition, just like many die of the flu each year. And so far not a single one has been attributed to Covid-19.

Hunger in the United States

In 2019, over 12.5 million children, and 40% of US undergraduate students experienced food insecurity.

The United States produces far more food than it needs for domestic consumption—hunger within the U.S. is caused by some Americans having insufficient money to buy food for themselves or their families. Additional causes of hunger and food insecurity include neighborhood deprivation and agricultural policy.

So you see, people are already starving due to unnecessary food shortages anyway - even without lock-downs etc. If it was a problem we would already have addressed it.

Which we have. The invisible hand of the market is sorting it out. Those who can't afford to eat may starve while food for the rich goes to waste, but that's just the way Capitalism works. Any other system would be less efficient* - especially if the government got involved. You know they would screw it up (because that's what governments do) and then there would be food lines where everyone has to take their turn for a moldy loaf of bread. Mark my words, any attempt by the government to manhandle the situation will instantly turn the US into a communist hellhole!

* defined as:- how much return I get on my investments.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Meat is a luxury from a resource perspective. A meat shortage is not synonymous with a food shortage. It could even increase the food supply.

 

[Meadmaker]

Trump Retweeted

The Counter
@TheCounter
First, there is no shortage of meat destined for the grocery store shelf.
It might take stores longer than usual to restock certain products, due to supply chain disruptions. But we have many millions of pounds of meat in cold storage across the nation.

Well, Trump has acknowledged, in his own Trumpian way, that there is a problem. His acknowledgement comes in the form of a denial, as is to be expected.

You can just see this coming from a mile away.

(The quote above came from a different thread.)

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The meat packing industry, of course, has a long history of abusing its workers.
I have a cousin who was general manager of a packing plant owned by a big company. Hmm why not name them: Iowa Beef Packers. He was in my state, so my parents decided to go visit him. They came back extremely upset. He was not only abusive to his wife, but openly bragged about hiring illegal aliens then making "anonymous" calls to Immigration to trigger raids just before they were due to be paid.

His younger sister is the one who died of Covid-19 recently.

I don't think people really appreciate how poor working conditions are in meat and agriculture industries. Smithfield Pork is becoming one of the country's largest outbreak clusters (outside of prisons), and it's in S. Dakota where general infection rates are low. PR from the company has placed the blame on their workers.

Suggesting that these meat plants are going to start taking good care of their employees by providing good pay, PPE, and paid leave is a massive shift in their normal operations.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

I don't think people really appreciate how poor working conditions are in meat and agriculture industries. Smithfield Pork is becoming one of the country's largest outbreak clusters (outside of prisons), and it's in S. Dakota where general infection rates are low. PR from the company has placed the blame on their workers.

Yeah, they were blaming it on their workers living together in cramped quarters. The thing is their employees live like that because of Smithfield's employment practices.

People don't live like that for ***** and giggles. They live like that for a reason. Mainly, they are undocumented laborers being paid a pittance.

 

[Meadmaker]

Senators Mike Lee and Amy Klobuchar are asking that this be looked into. They sent a letter, not a tweet.


https://www.ksl.com/article/46746178/sens-lee-klobuchar-ask-for-investigation-of-meat-supply-chain


Good on them. Legislators cannot move resources as quickly as the President could, but they can do a little bit.

 

[Meadmaker]

Meat is a luxury from a resource perspective. A meat shortage is not synonymous with a food shortage. It could even increase the food supply.

I don't think we are on the verge of seeing starvation in America. However, diet disruptions are a real problem.

With the price rises we have already seen for meat, it's a safe bet that there are many people that have been priced out of the market, and just don't get any now. While there are other great sources of protein, I'm guessing that a lot of folks don't really know the wonders of tofu and nut loaves.