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“We’re not there yet, but these are ugly numbers we’re seeing,” he said.

As the spread of coronavirus infections in Canada delays both the delivery of animals into processing plants and the flow of finished pork products to grocery store coolers, the parallel crisis in the U.S. is likely to exacerbate any domestic shortages and price increases here, said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

That’s because, just as Canadian farmers send feeder pigs to the U.S., American farmers send pork products back to Canada, a “rhythm has been messed up by COVID-19 and the closure of plants,” Hart said.

Photo by Stringer/Reuters files

Much of the reduced supply pumped out by U.S. meat packers is expected to be absorbed by the local market, reducing the potential for American meat to backfill any shortages of Canadian pork.

“We are in a weird situation where pork prices will be rising at the grocery store at a time when hog prices are the lowest in a decade and all because of a pinch point at the processing plants,” he said. “If you’re a hog producer, this is easily the most challenging time you have seen in your career.”

In a full-page advertisement in the New York Times on Sunday, Tyson Foods Inc.’s board chairman John Tyson warned that “millions of pounds of meat” will disappear from the supply chain as the pandemic forces processing plants to close, leading to product shortages in grocery stores.

“The food supply chain is breaking,” Tyson wrote. “Millions of animals — chickens, pigs and cattle — will be depopulated because of the closure of our processing facilities.”