Go vegan? Marco Rubio talks meat shortages

Marco Rubio

Though the war against COVID-19 is being won on some fronts, the slaughterhouse industry is not one of them.

As processing plants continue to shut down, at least temporarily, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio offered some advice on Wednesday’s edition of Fox and Friends.

“I guess we’ll have to go a little vegan, right?” Florida’s senior Senator quipped.

“Unlike other supply chain issues, this has nothing to do with anyone overseas. This has to do with how many people can you make work inside one of these processing plants — they’re all very close to each other and there’s a public health risk. So there’s been disruptions there,” Rubio noted. “I know people are working hard to get that resolved.”

The issues have already registered downstream in the supply chain, with fast food giant Wendy’s running out of hamburger at some locations. Wendy’s attaches a great deal of its brand identity to using beef that has not been frozen, and up until slaughterhouses had to shut down that was not foreseen as a problem.

Supermarket chains also have grave concerns, the NY Post notes. Costco has capped purchases, while Kroger warns in-store customers about shortages.

Meanwhile, a consortium of Attorneys General accuse slaughterhouses of “anti-competitive business practices,” reports Fox Business.

“The U.S. beef processing market is highly concentrated, with the four largest beef processors controlling 80% of U.S. beef processing,” the attorneys general wrote in a joint letter. “In short, with such high concentration and the threat of increasing consolidation, we have concerns that beef processors are well positioned to coordinate their behavior and create a bottleneck in the cattle industry — to the detriment of ranchers and consumers alike.”

While Americans may have to “go vegan” to whatever degree they can handle, good news can be found in the export sector, which sees American pork moving to China without restrictions, regardless of limitations on the domestic front, Reuters reported.