If you’re a meat eater – pay attention!

Leave a CommentIf you’re a meat eater – pay attention!Food

I am urging all readers to prepare for the worst and to start seriously practicing their self-reliance strategies. The health crisis is one thing – the upcoming food crisis is something else all together. We must prepare for our families and for the wider, most vulnerable in our communities. There is a very real food supply-chain disruption coming because of illness affecting farming, slaughtering and distribution. This is the time to stock your freezer and forge links with local farmers and distributers.

Plant shutdowns are leaving the U.S. dangerously close to meat shortages as coronavirus outbreaks spread to suppliers across the nation and the Americas.

Almost a third of U.S. pork capacity is down, the first big poultry plants closed on Friday and experts are warning that domestic shortages are just weeks away. Brazil, the world’s No. 1 shipper of chicken and beef, saw its first major closure with the halt of a poultry plant owned by JBS SA, the world’s biggest meat company. Key operations are also down in Canada, the latest being a British Columbia poultry plant. (Bloomberg)

As I reported on Friday, Russia has halted exporting wheat. This is a big deal for countries with no farming. Here in the US, farmers had a rough planting season on the plains because of terrible rains and floods.

Tyson Foods suspended operations Wednesday at its Waterloo, Iowa, pork plant, devastated by a growing coronavirus outbreak. This will deny a vital market to hog farmers and further disrupt the nation’s meat supply. Tyson had kept the facility, its largest pork plant, open in recent days over the objections of the mayor and local elected officials.

The plant can process about 19,500 hogs per day, accounting for nearly 4 percent of US pork-processing capacity, according to the National Pork Board.

Meanwhile, they are aborting sows.