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As coronavirus-related closures of slaughterhouses across the U.S. have caused fears of a nationwide meat shortage, Vermont’s processing plants remain open and working at full capacity.
However, even with Vermont’s 13 meatpacking facilities all operating, because of their size and scale, they’re not likely to be able to provide the majority of retailers throughout the state with enough product to solve a potential supply shortage.
The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets reports that meat processing facilities are booked out seven or eight weeks in advance and are operating at full capacity, which is causing an issue for some dairy farmers in the state who have been told to cull their herds to reduce milk production.
With the long delays in Vermont’s slaughterhouses and closures in Pennsylvania — where farmers tend to have their culled cattle processed — the Agency of Agriculture is trying to find a solution to make sure more cows can enter the meat market.
“Our slaughter facilities in Vermont will not be able to take in those animals, so how do farms manage that?” Diane Bothfeld, director of administrative services and dairy policy for the agency, said Wednesday.
“Could people delay — keep the animals on their farm longer, schedule stuff into the Vermont slaughter? But then there’s costs associated with that that dairy farmers aren’t going to be able to manage.”
Mark Curran, co-founder of Vermont Family Farms, told lawmakers Tuesday that Vermont Packinghouse, a Springfield-based processor, has been extremely busy, but that it and others in the state simply cannot operate on the scale of large facilities in the U.S.
“We are talking about 100-200 animals a day as opposed to these giant plants in the South and out West that do, you know, 20,000-30,000 animals a day,” Curran said.
“Vermont Packinghouse can’t handle that. They’re doing more production than ever. They’re pretty much at max capacity,” he said.
Curran also said Vermont-produced meat tends to be more expensive than “commodity meat,” and that most of it leaves the state for the population hubs in southern New England and New York.
“Not a whole lot of it stays in Vermont,” he said. “It’s sold in co-ops and stuff like that. It’s difficult for, you know, restaurants to buy locally just because it’s just not that competitive for them.”
Nationally, more than 20 slaughterhouses have been forced to close nationwide because of Covid-19, and while some have reopened, on Tuesday President Donald Trump issued an executive order demanding facilities stay open to try to prevent a shortage of chicken, pork and other meat on supermarket shelves.
In the cattle industry nationally, there is a backlog of more than 600,000 animals waiting to be slaughtered and processed.
There could be meat shortages on grocery shelves within a few weeks, as major packing plants have closed. Bacon, ham and other pork products could be the first to be scarce with the amount of frozen pork nationwide — more than 621 million pounds — dropping 4% from March to April, the USDA reported.
Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meat producers, has closed or reduced production at several facilities throughout the U.S., including a pork-processing plant in Iowa, where several workers tested positive for Covid-19. Other mega meat producers — including Smithfield Foods, JBS and Cargill — have also had coronavirus outbreaks at facilities.
Curran, who before starting Vermont Family Farms co-founded the wholesale distributor Black River Produce, said a meat processing plant is a perfect environment for the virus because they are kept at 34 degrees Fahrenheit, are very humid and have people working in very close proximity.
“A virus that maybe lives two days, in a meat processing plant might live five times that,” Curran said.
“The meat industry is in complete disarray,” he said.
Erin Sigrist, president of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, briefed lawmakers on how regional food distributors have already started planning for possible meat shortages and have been in communication with new vendors and buyers, looking for alternative sources for products.
Sigrist said distributors have also begun purchasing more meat products than they usually would and are freezing the supply in anticipation it may become scarce in the coming months.
“The next step is retailers will need to plan for that,” she said.
Sigrist added that since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, food distributors have been placing retailers on “allocation” in an attempt to make sure all stores have access to a product even if it is in a lower amount than it would usually buy.
“This has been happening since the beginning of the pandemic in hopes that as many stores have access to supplies as possible,” Sigirist said.
Large grocery chains, including Price Chopper and Hannaford, in the region are hoping they will have enough meat products for customers over the next several months.
Mona Golub, vice president of Price Chopper, told NBC5 News Tuesday that there would be an adequate supply in stores through at least next week and said inventory should be steady — as long as customers do not hoard.
“We are relying on a vast network of distributors, as well as surplus from the food service side of the supply chain, and expect to be able to fulfill normalized needs this week into next week,” Golub said.
Other grocery stores are even more confident that they will be able to weather the potential shortage.
Kari Bradley, general manager for Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier, told House lawmakers that because 40% of its sales come from Vermont products, it is positioned to be less impacted by nationwide shortages compared to other grocery stores.
“Of course there is the big meat disruption coming, but for stores like us that rely on local sourcing, things have been pretty consistent,” he said.