Author:
This has nothing to do with BCTS, stories, or writing but everyone needs to pay attention.
Intelligence has seemed to be lacking in anyone or anything having to do with government for as long as I can remember. A really long time. This is truly a short sighted, dumb, beyond comprehension "fix" that is being encouraged and helped along by my own government.
Progressive stupidity in action.
A: Many meat processing plants have closed or are closing due to widespread virus contamination among their workers.It takes labor, lots of labor to process livestock and poultry into eatable meats. The shoulder to shoulder contact on meat processing lines means lack of of inadequate protection means everyone shares within days.
B: Livestock farmers and poultry farmers suddenly find no market for their livestock or poultry. It takes an ungodly amount of money to raise a large number of piglets into 240 lb market pigs. That's the targeted weight for sending a pig to the sale barn or buyers. Poultry are almost as bad. Feed means it has to be raised or purchased. Lots of money involved either way. I was raised on a dairy farm. Daddy had over ten thousand pigs on the farm at one time after he closed the dairy.
C: Bacon, ham, pork chops, any of the cow cuts, hamburger, sirloin, etc is going to go out of sight price wise real soon as it becomes scare as the supply from those no longer operating slaughter houses empty out their storage facilities. If you are able you might stock up on what you can afford now. If it is still available in your area.
D: Renewing the supply chain from the farmer to the customer isn't going to be quick. Calves and piglets take a lot of time, feed to grow until they are market weight. It takes three to four years to bring a herd size back up to breeding quantities before any real numbers start getting shipped to market. Provided the slaughter houses have begun operations again. I'm guessing it will be four years before meats return to the store in any volume. Brazil sends a lot of beef our way. McDonalds is (was) their largest customer. Maybe they will fill in part of the void in the mean time? Latin American nations are iffy as there is always some dictator or war going on.
The information is there. How it plays out is anyone's guess. I gave you my thoughts. What you do must be your choice. You can cuss me if it doesn't really get as bad as I believe it will.
Piglets aborted, chickens gassed as pandemic slams meat sector
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-livest...
Gov will help destroying livestock
https://www.agriculture.com/news/livestock/as-meat-plants-sl...
Takes money and feed to grow baby pigs into market 240 pound pigs. And then there is no one who wants to buy them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pork-industry-usda-discuss-euth...
Pigs, sheep, cows, chickens a lot of livestock are going to be killed without going to market.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-livest...
I truly expect meat prices to go astronomical. This is all short sighted vision which is going to turn into a nightmare when everyone understands what has been done.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/some-cana...
Buy your pork, bacon, meat, NOW because you won't be able to afford it later. I think we are all going to be a whole lot thinner and this is going to last a really really long time. It takes a long time for a livestock breeding program to come back. Any livestock or poultry
Gear UP!
God if you truly love me I would rather watch this from the box seats rather than from Ground Zero
Barb
Comments
Dire Straights
I can't say what I actually think is happening because it will likely do no good, and simply frighten the hell out of folk.
God speed to you all, and see you on the other side.
Gwen
Meat is already getting scarce in Minnesota
Only some stores have pork at all. I shop at Costco quite a bit and all they have is beef right now. That will probably disappear in the next few weeks as well.
If you have a local butcher near you, it might be possible to find beef and pork there as they are more likely to do their own slaughter and processing. But the prices will be higher than what we are used to.
Getting by without meat
Beans and rice make a complete protein. Add some cheese if you can, Green Vegitables, I cook mine because my bodydoes not tolerate uncooked ones.
I'm confused
How is this the government's idea? If farmers can't feed them the only other option is slaughter and burial. On another note, I wonder about home butchering. I've butchered big game and birds all my life. If the price was reasonable I'd be willing to try a 240 pound pig though my hoist would be strained to the max. Chickens and turkeys are really easy if you dip them in boiling water for a few seconds before plucking. At least they were when I was younger and didn't have arthritis.
What I've Never Understood...
Why do farmers let the middlemen get all the profits? Is there some structural reason why they can't join together into small-scale coops to bring their own product to market? It's ludicrous that they're getting 84 cents a pound for live cattle, and we're paying $4 in the supermarkets for ground round. Certainly, there's a big enough spread there, even on the wholesale level, that small regional coops could afford to handle the slaughter and packing without endangering their workers?
One thing that most people don’t realize......
Is that roughly 50% of the cost of anything you buy is the cost of transportation.
Without even getting into the cost of slaughtering and processing meats, livestock need to be transported to the meat processors, and then finished goods have to be transported to the distributor, who then needs to transport them to the store for final retail sale.
Ignoring the fact that very recently the bottom dropped out of the oil market, as recent as a few months ago the average price of diesel fuel in the US was in the range of $3.50 per gallon. A tractor-trailer combination vehicle averages roughly 7 miles per gallon (some a little more, many even less depending on many factors), so the cost of fuel per mile is roughly $.50, which means a trip of 1000 miles costs $500 just in fuel. This does not include the fact that the driver gets paid by the mile as well, so add in roughly another $.40 per mile (which equates to about $200 per day as the average long haul driver will drive about 500 miles per day), and the the cost of the truck and trailer as well as overhead and maintenance. Pretty soon you are well over $2.00 per mile in real costs.
Yes, this cost gets spread out over the entire load, so the more you carry the lower the cost per unit - but remember that by law, the maximum gross vehicle weight for a combination vehicle in the US is 80,000 lbs., which includes the weight of truck and trailer, fuel, driver, etc. - plus the payload. Essentially, a truck can carry roughly 45,000 lbs. in freight. Also, trailer size is regulated by law - the maximum being 53’ in length, 102” in width, and 13’6” in height. Yes, some states like Texas allow for 57’ trailers, but they cannot leave Texas as they are illegal for interstate commerce in almost all states. Bottom line, a trailer carries roughly 3000 cubic feet of freight IF CUBED OUT, which seldom happens as most loads leave space within the trailer.
Soooooooo........... the point here is that it is more complex than simply a few farmers or ranchers getting together and forming a co-op.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
D. Eden explained it very succulently
What I wish she had included is oil went negative for the first time in history. Producers are or were having to pay thirty dollars a barrel to get rid of it. Farmers and Ranchers may be in dire straights, oil producers have it just as rough. I have zero love for Trump as a year ago he used wheat as a bargaining chip. The bottom fell out of the market. It was negative income harvesting it. I turned all mine into wheat. So did everyone else in the world I think. From OKC to Amarillo as far as the eye could see, all the fields had wheat bales stacked out. Now we are killing all the livestock needed to consume that excess livestock feed. This is a bottomless abyss that is beginning to grow larger with no relief.
Oil producers have hit that same abyss. I'm questioning why they all don't stop and leave it in the ground? Like the first mess I wrote about, shutting off the spigot takes time. Oil producers are like farmers, they live and die by the Ponzi Scheme. The only way to survive is to keep expanding to pay off more and more debt and when one is no longer able to expand, the house of cards comes down.
hugs people,
Gear Up
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Tyson isn't the government
It's the plant owners who closed them, not the government.
- io
Yes, but.......
Poor planning and ignoring the facts by the current administration put all of us in the position we are currently in. If we had a competent manager in the White House, some one who would listen instead of the current arrogant egomaniac, then we would have been much better prepared to deal with the crisis.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
As a professional logistician.......
We have been predicting this since last December. If there is anyone out there who still believes the Orange Asshole in the White House, let me say unequivocally that he has been getting reports since December 2019 telling him that exactly what is happening now WAS GOING TO HAPPEN unless his administration took the necessary actions to prepare and prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Apparently, either he never read them, or he simply dismissed them as not fitting into his fantasy world. Honestly, I’m not even sure the asshole can read.
This was not unforeseen; in fact, it was predicted decades ago.
One of the facets of modern society is that the vast majority of us no longer live near where the food is grown or produced. Supply chains have become longer and more complex over the years, and those of us who deal with them every day are unfortunately the only ones who really understand just how brittle some of the facets are.
I implore each and every one of you to remember, that at times like this, all we have is each other. It is imperative that those of us who can help, do help. I know that most of us are separated by hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. I live near Saratoga Springs, NY - if there is anyone near me who is in trouble, please reach out and ask for help. I will do everything in my power to help; I have been blessed to work for a great employer who is working to take care of all employees in this tough time, so both my spouse and I are still being paid.
Based on my somewhat unique viewpoint of the world, and the fact that part of my job is to analyze what is going on over the entire world and how it will impact markets and my employer, we planned ahead and are in good shape - where others may not have been able to do so. I may not be able to help many of you as you are simply too far away, but anyone close should reach out if they need help.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
mm good thing im close
to some butchers, a meat processing plant, cold storage as well. Beef and pork are not important to me anyways. fish and poultry are of more importance.
Worse than I Thought!
Gear UP People. This is getting ugly in a hurry and a heck of a lot worse than even I thought. Our own government seems intent on destroying the American farmer and rancher for some ungodly reason.
https://www.facebook.com/shad.sullivan/videos/10213643611163...
I can take care of myself but I can't take care of all the hordes who have been texting they will go out and collect from the farmer or rancher when they run out. Horses and cows in SW Oklahoma and Florida panhandle have been shot and partially butchered. Why don't they take the whole animal once they killed it? They can't carry that much at one time.
Why aren't you reading or hearing any of this? No need to panic the public..., just yet.
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
These News Articles are coming in thick and heavy
Hopefully it's true and maybe some of the shortage will be adverted although several of the largest plants have closed.
Trump to invoke Defense Production Act to keep meat-processing plants open amid fears of supply shortage
Workers will be supplied protection gear by the government if they are employed under the national emergency policy.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Protecting the hamberder supply
The Defense Protection Act is invoked to keep the hamburgers coming, but not to produce tests or protective gear.
And I don't find the idea of infected workers processing meat very reassuring.
- io
Doesn't meantion tests but
Doesn't meantion tests but does claim the gov will provide the protection gear.
The order will invoke the Defense Production Act and will deem the facilities a part of the country’s critical infrastructure as concerns mount that the U.S. food supply chain will be disrupted because of the contagion. The federal government will also supply additional personal protective gear to plant employees.
I searched to check if other MSM are reporting this story. Although they are reporting how many times Trump and the DOD has invoked the Act, so far crickets on this particular one.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-to-invoke-defense-pro...
hugs people, Gear Up
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Crickets?
If you google "trump orders meat processing plants open" you'll see that Fox News isn't the only MSM outlet reporting this. There are stories from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN, US News and World Report, NBC, and The Hill. That's just the first page.
It would be impossible to report that Trump is ordering any firm to produce tests or protective gear because he hasn't done it.
- io
Not Crickets
This was discussed in depth all day long on MSNBC.
There are big questions about workers showing up. Up until now they've been giving them a bonus. But how many will face almost sure infection?
I went vegan in November. Don't miss meat at all. Blood pressure down. Weight about the same. Lots of pasta.
I'm on my way to the grocery store to buy two week's worth. I expect the meat department will be bare with people hoarding.
Biggest news in MN is Pence being an ass at Mayo. You can't imagine how offensive it is to the average Minnesotan for Pence to thumb his nose at the Clinic's rules. Nearly everyone in Minnesota has a close relative whose life was extended by Mayo. Pence is starting to look frantic, as if he knows that Haley is looming.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
When god closes a refrigerator
he opens a pantry. We can all start eating toilet paper now that things have eased up
Love, Andrea Lena
I'm a vegtable myself
I let the livestock eat it and then I eat meat so sure as the sun rises in the west every morning, god provides us with weedless gardens, and evil has been vanquished. Surely I am a vegetarun. I mean, most of our foods are processed and I'm taking advantage of it being processed before I toss it on the grill.
Now about the green dress you wore to the World Autos Show last year at The Chicago Coliseum. I bet nine out of ten men who saw you with that red sports car, even I barely remember the car, couldn't tell you the name of the car. How much you get paid to model with that car? All that aside, I wanna borrow that dress.
Hugs Jill
Barb
Life is a gift. Treasure it.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl