“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
- A phrase heard in the Pick Floyd song, “Another Brick in the Wall”
Okay, so this is actually part of a song by Pink Floyd on The Wall album, but I could not help but think of it recently with the nationwide meat shortage became a local issue with a single Facebook post. Yesterday, the Linton Save-a-Lot, the local mecca for Lintonian meat-lovers, posted the following to its Facebook account:
We regret to inform you:
•We are unable to honor the $2.99/lb 80% ground beef price in our weekly ad. We are unable to purchase ground beef for less than $6/lb
•We did not receive any of the T-Bones that are listed in our ad. We receive trucks Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday but cannot be sure they will be shipped on those trucks.
•We do not have the family pack boneless skinless chicken breast. We are simply unable to obtain chicken breast at this time.We apologize for any inconvenience.
There are several world-wide issues in play, but Covid-19 is one of the larger issues, of course. Shortages are not because of supply itself, though, but from bottlenecks and halts in the supply chain. Workers falling ill on farms and in production and processing plants are bringing a halt to supply lines.
It should be noted, though, that the output from a such places with known infections does not pose health concerns because Covid-19 is not a food-borne illness. So, meat from a farm or a processing plant can still be sent out despite a confirmed case of Covid-19, experts say, they just do not currently have the manpower to produce the products. As we come into that time of year for backyard barbecues, that Memorial Day meal is going to cost a little more — or consist of some different dishes.
Photo by samer daboul from Pexels