Stocks of pork products will be low throughout May, with slaughterhouses shutting down because of workers contacting the coronavirus.
Pork shortages are likely within days following the closures of processing facilities due to coronavirus-related worker illness. High pork prices are likely in the coming weeks.
The closures of slaughterhouses have caused huge problems for pig farmers. With hogs needing to be kept in buildings to be fattened up for slaughter, incoming piglets have nowhere to go, forcing some farmers, already reeling from an upended supply chain after the closures of restaurants, to cull the hogs and piglets or even give pregnant sows injections, causing them to abort their baby pigs.
"The difference today is we have a situation where we are not running the plants at even close to capacity, so the hogs are being backed up," he told"The pipeline of pork is drying up quickly and that is going to create the shortage," he said,"[which] is going to show up real quick, I think at the retail outlets, probably at the end of the week."
In any case, these stocks are only a"short term" solution, according to David Ortega, associate professor and food economist at Michigan State University. Meanwhile, Jayson Lusk, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, said he expected prices to rise"in the coming week, reflecting increased scarcity."
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