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A comment on As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear showing up at work. Parent comment

Re:As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear sh... by Consultant32452 on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:00PM (#22859417)
The one Smithfield facility mentioned in that article represents 4-5% of US production. The governor has asked it to close for 14 days. That's not the only meat packing/food supply chain breakdown. Here's another article mentioning a major Tyson meat processing plant shutdown. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
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Re:As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear sh... by AnimalMuppet on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:32PM (#22859697)
So we're down maybe 10 or 20% of US meatpacking capacity? That's... not good. (Depends on how much spare capacity there is in the system, of course.)

(The 10-20% is a guess, based on one large plant and some other plants, without hard data. If anyone has real data, step right up.)

I was in Richmond, Virginia 10 days ago, and people were saying there was no meat in grocery stores, so they went to Texas Roadhouse in order to be able to eat non-vegitarian, because Texas Roadhouse still had steaks.

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Re:As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear sh... by Consultant32452 on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:38PM (#22859746)
I work on a team that's mostly offshore in India. One of them remarked that they went to multiple stores and couldn't find any vegetables. Like many Indians, my coworker is a vegetarian. That's just an anecdote, but I worry things are going to get bad there.

There's locust swarms in Africa, and it's potentially heading towards China. I expect there to be widespread food shortages in the coming weeks/months. I'm not sure about how life will be here in the US. We're rich, we're a net food exporter, etc. as long as the processing and other supply chain parts keep mostly working I think we'll be okay-ish. You might not get the exact product you want, but you probably won't face starvation. But in many poor countries in Africa and Asia, I think it's about to get really, really bad.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/locust-outbreak-africa-congo

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-locusts/china-urges...

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