The Impact of COVID 19 on the Meat Supply Chain in the USA: A Review

One major concern of food companies during the pandemic is employee’s health. Accompanying this was the concern of being able to maintain a proper workforce to keep production levels up to meet the consumer’s demand. Numerous employees were not capable of working due to sickness (COVID positive or required quarantine) or as well as people choosing not to work due to the fear of COVID 19. Due to conditions and methods of meat processing facilities, COVID 19 is easily transmissible and spread to workers: Social distancing decreased due to standing close together on the production line, yelling across the plant and to others due to noise which led to more droplets being spread in the air, busses, and car sharing. All of this contributed to at least 54,036 workers who contracted the virus and 232 worker deaths in the meat industry within the USA (Campuzano et al., 2020). Workers in production facilities have lower incomes, which results in having limited to no insurance coverage, which makes coming to work a risk. Fig. 2 compares food production workers to all other workers. There is a higher percentage of full-time food production workers, however, the percentage of food production workers that are classified as earning low income is much higher. This lowered income explains the higher percentage who are uninsured. In many cases, workers also have no paid sick leave so this led to workers coming in even if they were sick (Artiga and Rae, 2020).

Fig. 2. Employment, income, and health insurance coverage among food production workers compared to all workers in 2018. This figure compares aspects of working between food production workers and all other workers based on the percentages of full-time workers, low income, and uninsured. The classification for low income is based off the federal poverty level (FPL) in the year 2018. Adapted from Artiga and Rae (2020) with CC-BY-NC-ND.

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It was found that cold and dark environments lacking ultraviolet light, characteristic of the environment in meat processing facilities, allows COVID 19 to remain viable longer, allowing for an increased spread of COVID 19 (Gulland, 2020). With these cold temperatures allowing the virus to be preserved, it can then easily transfer into the cold noses of workers. Thus, as the increase in the spread of the virus is inevitable when workers must shout in a noisy working condition, these particles are spread into the cold air where more can be produced (Gulland, 2020). This phenomenon can be further backed as other factories and processing facilities that do not have a cold environment did not have the outbreaks seen in meat processing facilities.

A couple of studies have been conducted by Chin et al. (2020) to examine the stability of the COVID 19 virus on different surfaces and at different temperatures. Chin et al. (2020) determined that COVID 19 was much more stable and remained infectious/activated at colder temperatures, 4°C, much longer than when incubated at higher temperatures, 70°C. It was also determined that COVID 19 was much more stable on smooth surfaces, especially stainless steel, and remained detectable for 7 days (Chin et al., 2020). Furthermore, stainless steel surfaces accompanied by the colder temperatures allows for the virus to be very stable and can be transmissible for much longer. The average ambient temperature of meat processing plants is no higher than 10°C, which allows the meat or meat product to remain around 3°C once stored (Federal Register, 1997). The cold environment accompanied by the even colder meat allows for the perfect environment for COVID 19 to remain stable and infectious for longer. It was also found that the virus is susceptible to standard disinfectants, so ensuring that spaces are sanitized properly would be able to prevent additional spreading of the COVID 19 virus (van Doremalen et al., 2020).

A similar study was done that measured the viability of two different strains of COVID virus of different surfaces (van Doremalen et al., 2020). The strain of interest is the strain that caused the pandemic, COVID 19. The study reported the viability of COVID 19 for 72 hours on stainless steel, which is a type of common materials used in slaughter facilities and meat processing plants (van Doremalen et al., 2020). All the issues surrounding employee health and the increased risk of spreading the virus in the meat processing environment contributed to food production facilities being reduced, suspended, or even shut down, which was more prominent in the meat processing industry. In late April of 2020, the capacity in meat processing facilities had dropped approximately 25% because of the pandemic (Aday and Aday, 2020).

As restaurants and other big food selling venues such as sport stadiums began to shut down, the meat supply chain struggled. The shift from producing more products in bulk for industry use to more individually packaged at home goods was difficult. The transition was costly and contributed to the increase in meat prices. The transition also led to a slowdown in production plants as well, leading to less demand for livestock. The shift from purchasing away from home foods to at home foods led to these disruptions in the supply chain. Foods that are typically consumed away from home, like at a restaurant, are packaged differently. As restaurants closed there were many of these large, packaged products that had no destination. Other difficulties included establishing new contracts, changing from large bulk packages to smaller more individual packages, changing food labels to meet the requirements of retailers, etc.; these were a few examples of why the transition between away from home food to more at home food was difficult and costly (Hobbs, 2021). This difficulty of switching and the time it takes to do so is called a lag phase and it changes depending on the species. Eggs and wings from broilers come much quicker due to the faster reproduction time and growth unlike beef cattle, which have a much longer breeding cycle. There are much fewer issues with chicken supply due to this discrepancy.

Fig. 3 shows the change in consumer spending on groceries versus at restaurants. When the pandemic was declared on March 13^th, 2020, the drastic change in consumer spending occurred. There was a major increase in the spending on groceries accompanied by a major decrease with the spending in restaurants. This change in spending peaked around March 20^th, 2020, and from there they slowly returned to their normal pre-pandemic state where they are about equal. It can also be seen that even as the pandemic has died down in April 2022, the amount of spending for both grocery and restaurants are consistently higher than pre-pandemic numbers. The shift in production has also changed the demand of consumers. The closure of restaurants and the increased purchase of groceries has resulted in a change in demand for different cuts and types of meat. Consumers are less likely to purchase a high-end expensive steak and would more likely opt for something cheaper. It is unknown how long this change of demand due to COVID 19 will last and if the view by consumers will ever revert back.

Fig. 3. Change in consumer spending on grocery vs. restaurants. The figure illustrates the amount of consumer spending put towards groceries as well as restaurants and hotels during the COVID 19 pandemic period. Adapted from Economic Tracker (2020) with permission of Opportunity Insights.

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In order to maintain a constant supply of meat while avoiding losses and waste within the supply chain, governmental policies will be necessary, especially in the case of the COVID 19 pandemic. An important part of policy that needs to be implemented mainly surrounds the food waste that is produced, both on the consumer and production level. Another common issue seen in the meat supply chain is that when big production facilities would shut down all of the surrounding area would struggle. Therefore, it would be important to promote smaller local production facilities for food and agriculture producers. If there were more small-scale regional production facilities then if one shut down due to COVID, there is potential that it would not affect the surrounding communities nearly as much (Zielińska-Chmielewska et al., 2021).

In the USA, President Trump issued an executive order on April 28, 2020, invoking the Defense Production Act. This act allowed processing facilities to remain open as they did not have to close based on state and local legislation. This considered processing facilities as essential businesses. However, even though this executive order was passed, some meat processing facilities were still forced to close due to COVID 19 outbreaks among workers (Zielińska-Chmielewska et al., 2021).

An issue arose questioning the meat processing facilities’ ability to utilize their market power in order to earn overly increased profits (Balagtas and Cooper, 2021). This question has been raised due to the ease of access and ability to easily change the prices of meat and price for livestock. The circumstance allows for the meat packing industry to make large profits. There have been many lawsuits put up against some large meat processing facilities, as well as an investigation by the USA Justice Department. These lawsuits were raised in response to the widening price spread margin between livestock and retail meat costs (Ma and Lusk, 2021). Government policies would need to be set in place to prevent large meat processing plants from abusing their market power, however, much research has been done to conclude that large meat processing facilities are not abusing their market power. It has been asked if having more small-scale production facilities would help prevent drastic price spreads or help prevent large processing facilities from abusing their market power. However, it has been shown that even if there were only small processing facilities and no market power available, large prices spreads would still result due to an exogenous disruption such as COVID 19 (Ma and Lusk, 2021).

Many states have implemented legislation to help support the introduction of small and medium sized processing facilities. The same type of financial support has come from the federal level along with passed bills allowing these small processing facilities to have more access to large markets. The rationale behind this is to allow the small processing facilities to be able to compete with the larger processing facilities. The increased competition will allow for there to be a wide spread of small processing facilities across an area rather than just having one large facility supplying the market. This is all in hopes that when an exogenous factor, such as COVID 19 causes a production facility to shut down there will be less repercussions (Ma and Lusk, 2021).

One thing that had been implemented to the food supplying sector was a plan for potential second or third waves of COVID 19. These plans heavily incorporate flexibility which was lacking pre-pandemic and could be seen in the beginning of the pandemic. The plans have also adapted to the needs of retail businesses as well as building a larger more diverse customer base with different needs. COVID 19 has required increased health and hygiene practices along with social distancing. In response to these practices, there has been increased automation and digitization to help in the prevention of the spreading of the COVID 19 virus, as well as other illnesses, or in the event of another pandemic. Robots currently do simple jobs such as unloading, loading, packaging, and quality control checks. Further automation in production plants is difficult due to the many different sizes and shapes of carcasses. However, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, there has been an accelerated push to finding methods to further increase automation. One key component to automation is how cost-effective it can be. The cost-effectiveness depends on the ability of robotics to ramp up productivity, enhance quality control, and improve food safety compared to the average worker (Weersink et al., 2021). The pandemic has helped the cost-effective side as a result of the slowed lines due to less workers and COVID 19 protocols. Robots would also be helpful with the current worker shortage in meat processing plants that has been seen before and during the COVID 19 pandemic as robotics could take over simple tasks that are currently being filled by workers. Digitization has increased in the form of making transactions from paper to digital. The pandemic has increased digitization as there has been an increase in remote working from home, as well as less business travel due to restrictions (Hobbs, 2021).

There are some major issues that have arisen concerning the consumers’ meat consumption with regards to the shortage of meat supply due to COVID 19. The primary concern could be the food security and sustainability due to several major meat facilities being shut down. Food security is a person’s access to food in both a physical and economic standpoint. During the pandemic, food security was more associated with the consumers’ ability to access food instead of the availability of food (Aday and Aday, 2020). Subsequently, there is a growing concern for maintaining a healthy diet, which is essential for providing required nutrients and supporting the immune system. Without proper access to food the ability to maintain healthy diets is difficult. The raise in meat prices led to people buying more processed or manufactured foods, developing poor and less nutritious diets (Patton et al., 2021). Also, there were concerns about food safety that rose during the pandemic. Since the agriculture industry has not been able to continue business as usual, there has been the potential for negative impacts on food quality, freshness, and safety, which hinders the market as well as affordability.

With the increase spread of food safety in response to COVID 19, many consumers became more concerned about where the food they are eating comes from and the large workforce responsible for the food ending up there. This was due to the periods of time when the pandemic would peak in numbers and people would rush to the store to stock up on essential goods, meat being one of them. The excessive buying from consumers led to shelves being quickly emptied. Consumers had also been concerned about the quality of the products in which were being produced due to the laxed safety requirements. Surveys were given in one study to gather data on consumers’ perspective on the relaxation of food safety and environmental regulations (Tonsor et al., 2021). It was initially seen as an increase in concern by the consumer. This in turn could lead to a decrease in meat consumption, which is hard on the meat supply chain, as well as the economy.

There were safety concerns on the production side of the supply chain. During the first few months of the pandemic as production speeds slowed down, production decreased and the stock on shelves lowered. In response to this lack of meat, the Food Safety Inspection Service allowed the production line to be sped up in the processing facilities of all beef, pork, and poultry. The USA Food and Drug Administration also relaxed on safety protocols to allow for the switch from food packaged for commercial use to be packaged as at home food. However, this temporary mitigation protocol not only led to potential food safety issues, which might put the consumer at risk of getting sick, but the increased line speeds also heightened the risk of contracting the COVID 19 virus among workers. As a result, the meat industry could gain negative perceptions from consumers about the meat that they eat. This negative perception could lead to decrease in buying which in turn results in less profit. There was also a concern of COVID 19 being able to be spread through meat, especially salmon. However, COVID 19 is not able to be transmitted through food (Aday and Aday, 2020). Pathogens can be spread through animal flesh, however, there has not been any recorded incidents of transmission from animal flesh to humans due to the acidic environment of the human stomach (Aday and Aday, 2020). Even though there has not been any evidence of COVID 19 being transmitted through animal flesh, the thought and fear behind it has led to a backlog which affects other parts of the food industry. This fear has led to less product being bought, which spreads not only from not buying salmon, but not buying other meats as well.

In general, the consumer is most concerned with the food’s safety, taste, nutrition, and price, as core food values according to many studies. With the COVID 19 pandemic, consumers began to become even more so concerned with these values, especially safety and supply. Consumers have tried to seek reassurance that the quality and safety of their food does not decrease. The governments of different countries have taken steps to ensure that trade of essential goods such as foods are still maintained despite the trade ban on non-essential goods. At the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, price was proven to be the most focused of food purchasing attributes (Hobbs, 2021). Before the pandemic, quality attributes, such as meat color and purge/drip in the package were the focus when it came to purchasing meat.

COVID 19 has raised awareness of food waste or food that is lost in the production process. Production loss was around 1/3 and has remained about the same throughout the COVID 19 pandemic. However, food waste at the household level has slightly increased mainly as an effect of the panic buying done by consumers. When the consumers buy a surplus of products, they are unable to use them all before they spoil, leading to them being thrown out. Also, consumers had taken up different forms of cooking and baking as a hobby due to being locked in. They stockpiled more ingredients and supplies than they needed or could possibly use, leading to spoilage (Aday and Aday, 2020; Fleetwood, 2020).

An animal welfare issue rose when the capacity for animals at slaughterhouses began to fill up. The demand for animals at production facilities decreased due to this decreased capacity leaving farmers with animals in excess. Animals in excess are often euthanized, but there were some cases in which farm animals were donated to animal sanctuaries or sold to other individuals at auctions instead of being killed. The animal welfare issue was more prominently seen with the excess of pigs. In 2018 there was an outbreak of African Swine fever in China, resulting in China needing more pigs to be imported. As the USA is a big exporter of pigs to China, the pork industry increased production of pigs to send to China. As COVID 19 struck, however, the swine industry in the USA were faced with an excess of pigs due to the ramped production. This excess surplus eventually led to upwards of 10 million pigs being euthanized, using the American Veterinary Medical Association’s approved methods. The most common of these methods used were captive bolt stunning or a gunshot. Another method that caused concern to animal welfare was with ventilation shut down. This method involved shutting all access to ventilation causing the pigs to eventually suffocate in their own carbon dioxide (Grandin, 2021). This method is of concern for animal welfare as it is often not done properly, and pigs are left suffocating for close to a day (Harsh, 2020). There were also instances of controversial slaughter via a method of using foam containing Nitrogen gas leading to quicker suffocation. This method has been declared inhumane from the European Food Safety Authority (Kevany, 2020).

It has been questioned whether food supply chains that are dominated by large scale operations are more or less resilient than those with many small sized production plants. This tension has existed well before COVID 19, but the virus has caused the concern to grow as many wonder how to properly prevent food shortages. The issue with having a lesser amount of large processing facilities is that if one facility shuts down or even slows production, it has a large impact as a whole and affects a widespread area. It has been thought that having many smaller production facilities could mitigate this issue. The question arises wondering if having a more dispersed system of smaller-scale facilities brings along more resilience. The answer to this question has been found to depend on many factors, both short and long term. Having fewer large-scale operations is more efficient considering the scale and scope economies. The goal of the scale and scope economies is to spread out the cost of equipment and buildings across a longer time period while in the meantime producing even more product, leading to a lower average cost. The scale economy focuses on creating a larger output to bring in more revenue (Green, 2020). The scope economy focuses on having a larger range of products to target more buyers to also increase profits. The consumer benefits from this as if the costs for the production facilities is lower, the prices of the product will be lower. Having many small-scale operations is less efficient as there are higher costs due to there being less opportunity of this scale and scope economy due to less resources being available (MacDonald, 2000). It is possible however, that these small-scale facilities could be more flexible. With the small-scale operations, producers can have more one-on-one connections to buyers and easier networking, which allows for more inputs to be secured along with new buyers. Small-scale operations are less vulnerable to failure when one facility is shut down. However, these systems cost more as they are less efficient, increasing the cost for consumers, as well as requiring much more labor than the large-scale plants as there are many more jobs available. Having a system that requires more workers is disadvantageous in a pandemic as there are less workers available in general, decreasing food chain resilience. Medium-long term effects are typically result from uncertainty within the food supply chain. This uncertainty being the duration and severity of the closures and disruptions due to COVID 19. There is an economic attribute to this uncertainty due to closures and mass layoffs of non-essential businesses resulting in the income of consumers to decrease. A decreased income of consumers could potentially decrease the demand for meat or cause consumers to resort to cheaper substitutions and alternatives. It is difficult to predict these medium-long term effects due to that uncertainty. Another sense of uncertainty is the recurrent lockdowns that were being placed. It was unknown when or if these would be reinstated, which would close restaurants, bars, and other food services. The issue is not necessarily when or if the lockdowns would return, but how long they would last and the severity of them (Hobbs, 2021).