Producers Say Beef Supply is Good For Now
In spite of the 2-week closure of the JBS packing plant and slow down of others, Colorado Beef producers agree with the Secretary of Agriculture when he says there's no shortage of food, at least not for now.
Todd Inglee is Colorado Beef Council Executive Director.
“Everything is functioning normally as far as the supply chain side goes, it’s just this huge pull on the consumer side draining it faster than they can keep it full. But there’s still plenty of product in the pipeline. They just need to get out to the retail stores.
Supply chains are shifting from restaurant and institutional settings to retail which have different requirements. Ag secretary Sonny Perdue told the nation It's taking the food system a little time to adjust to the new demand situation.
But Inglee says they are concerned about the possibility of more packing plants shutting down.
Inglee: “ If these meat plants have a chain reaction where there is more than one plant that starts to shut down, because of employee health which is definitely really important, there could be a disruption in supply because of not being able to process that meat. So there could be some disruptions but it’s too early to tell. Fortunately, the state of Colorado is looking into what some of those chain reactions might be and they’ve got industry experts and industry organizations included on those and everybody’s working hard gathering information and data and processing it to hopefully prepare and mitigate as much of these disruptions as possible.”
