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By Chantal Wagner

Beef supply chain during COVID-19 pandemic

Apr 27, 2020 | 3:07 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB -The beef processing industry involves a whole chain of events the day the calf is born to being on store shelves.

With the Cargill meat processing plant in High River shut down and slowed production at JBS in Brooks due to COVID-19 cases, there’s a concern in the beef industry that production will back up.

Vice-Chair of Alberta Cattle Feeders’ Association Jacob Buekert has a feedlot at Warner, AB.

He says producers have the supply that’s needed. The biggest thing is if they’re not moving cattle from the feedlot.

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And says if producers can’t sell or move cattle to the packing plant then there’s no room to buy new cattle.

Which affects auction markets and calf sales.

He says calves would have to stay longer on ranches and that could create a feed burden as well.

On the other side, he says truck drivers make a living hauling cattle and workers at packing plants also make a living processing the beef.

“If there’s 7-thousand head a day that get harvested at the plants in Alberta, if we miss two weeks and then plus going through a period of half-kill or three-quarter kill, you start to back cattle up. And so it doesn’t take long to be backing up two to three hundred thousand head of cattle. So it would be that much pen space that wouldn’t be available for calves and stuff to come in.”

Buekert says markets are designed as we need to be fed.

The industry is not designed to store piles of food and bring it out in case there’s an emergency.

He says not having enough capacity at the plants is a big concern.

Adding that unions, government, processing plants, and producers need to work together to find a solution.

“Meat is a perishable item and so the whole system is designed to put the right amount on the shelf so that the consumer uses it so that it doesn’t expire. And so you can’t store it and so you just can’t make it up. It’s not like a grain bin full of wheat where you’ve been waiting for the market, now we put the auger in and go.”

Buekert says he ships to four processing plants depending on the month which include JBS, Cargill, and two plants in Washington.

He says it depends on who needs cattle the most for that time.

Between him and his customers, they have about 7-thousand to 8-thousand head of cattle that need to go out in the next 60 days according to Buekert.

It’s about $3.50 per head per day to feed. “On our end about $28-thousand a day economic loss. At some point cattle don’t get much bigger and eat for maintenance,” he said.

Buekert adds COVID-19 is the enemy. Not the union, not the workers, not the packing plants. “How do we do the best we can to make sure everyone is safe, yet everyone can still eat?”