Stores say no to meat shortage
BY DONNA SCHWARZ
You may have noticed a lack of selection or bare spots while out shopping for groceries in the meat departments. You are not alone. Across the country people are fearing the worst about impending food shortage, particularly meats. Should you really be concerned?
Here’s what is really happening.
When the COVID-19 virus first started to surface and mass testing began, several biggest meat processors where temporarily closed due to the high rate of positive COVID-19 cases. Some of the plants that closed for a brief period were Smithfield Foods in South Dakota, JBS Pork in Minnesota, Perdue Farms, and Tyson Fresh Foods in Iowa. They are some of the largest meat processing plants in the United States.
As a result of the closure, meat processing, or preparing the meat to sell, has been back logged.
The plants are now reopened, but they are not operating at 100 percent production. Most have
reopened with split shifts or reduced shifts to allow for safer measures for the employees. Operating at 50 percent production of what they normally do. At this time they are only producing their best selling products in order to be able to keep up with demand. But they are open and working hard to ensure that Americans have meat on the table.
On our local level, meat market manager of Krause’s Markets, Brandt Schwarz said, “We are
attempting to keep our prices as low as possible and keep products available for our customers.”
Schwarz said that when COVID-19 became a reality in North Dakota, people started to bulk buy.
“There was mass panic at first, people where scared and started to buy to fill their freezers so they didn’t have to come out again,” he said.
In April, Schwarz said that he noticed that beef prices were on the rise and also knew about the meat plants that were closing.
