Many restaurants have been crippled by the pandemic, but barbecue joints closures have been few and far between. Though most pitmasters suffered a huge dip in their business for the first week of shelter-in-place orders, the rebound has been swift. “Out of every food segment there is, by far barbecue is number one right now, and it ain’t even close by numbers,” Austin says. Not a single barbecue joint that buys beef from him has closed, and, as mentioned before, Ben E. Keith has gained a few customers. Its Fort Worth distribution center shipped out 1,075 cases of briskets (roughly 5,000 briskets) in the first two days this week. “That’s about a week’s worth,” Austin says. Those freezers are mostly empty, and the frozen briskets are gone. “I’ve never gone to bed at night and not had a brisket in the building,” Austin says, but he’s expecting that will be the case this weekend. He has more beef shipments coming in Monday morning, or at least he hopes so.
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[....] then consider the huge market for ground beef as consumer demand shifts from steaks at fine dining restaurant to drive-through burgers and bulk buying at grocery stores (more on the challenges of these two distinct supply chains later). When the demand can’t be met for ground beef (just try to order a triple cheeseburger at Wendy’s), the packers are going to grind briskets long before they reach for expensive tenderloins and ribeyes.
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The 44 Farms briskets and beef ribs are a favorite of barbecue joints, at least the ones that can get them. It has built a uniquely valuable brand for boutique beef, but many of its fine, high-end restaurant clients aren’t open. The briskets and ground beef were moving, according to Jason Schimmels, its director of sales, but not the “middle meats” like tenderloins, ribeyes, and strips generally sold at steakhouses. It chose to shut down processing lines, operated at Caviness beef processors in Hereford, for a full month.
“If we harvest two hundred head of cattle, what are we supposed to do with those ribeyes for the next three, four, or five weeks?” Schimmels asks. Employees had to move fresh steaks to the freezer, immediately lowering their value to chefs. “Ninety-nine percent of all our business is and has been food service,” he says, so they tested the retail waters. In addition to selling through the 44 Farms online store, a small grocer in the Northeast carried 44 Farms steaks for three weeks, but immediately went back to a more inexpensive supplier once that option became available. 44 Farms decided that offloading live cattle was a better option than adding to the freezer stock.
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Just look more closely at the ground beef from the grocery store to see the effects. Ground beef is usually made from lean cattle and older animals that wouldn’t make for great steaks because the beef is so lean. Now the fat cattle are getting ground up as well. There is an allowable range for beef that’s labeled 90 percent lean, so don’t be surprised to find some extra fat in your next package from the store. I buy 80 percent lean for my burgers at home, but I noticed the USDA is now tracking sales of 73 percent lean beef (which is 27 percent fat). When I mention that to Thuss, he explains, “Seventy-three is the maximum allowable fat content that you can sell in ground beef under U.S. law and still call it ground beef.” All that is to say that those fat cattle that usually fetch a premium from the beef processors are rapidly dropping in value. “A fat cow right now in a box is worth well over twice what it is standing up in a pen,” Thuss says, but that difference in value is normally 20 percent. From the perspective of the live beef market, Thuss believes, “We’re not at the bottom yet. We’re still on our way down.”
Lost amid all of this was the fact that Trump’s order, which appeared on the White House website late Tuesday, does not actually order meat-processing plants to reopen. Indeed, it does not order the meat-processing plants to do anything. And although the president had told reporters Tuesday that his order would “solve any liability problems” that plants might face with respect to lawsuits arising from covid-19 exposures, the order does not do that either. Far from a death warrant, it is a paper-thin proclamation with limited legal effect.
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What exactly are those powers? First, the Defense Production Act allows the president — and now, by virtue of Tuesday’s order, Perdue — to require meat and poultry plants to prioritize certain contracts over others. For example, if a beef plant cannot satisfy all of its demand, then Perdue can mandate that the plant provide beef to the Army before it ships its product to a supermarket chain.
Second, and somewhat more vaguely, the Defense Production Act authorizes the president (and now Perdue) to “allocate materials, services, and facilities in such manner, upon such conditions, and to such extent as he shall deem necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense.” Could Perdue invoke that authority to order a plant to reopen? Possibly, though he hasn’t done so yet. Such an order would not shield the plant from liability for potential covid-19 exposures, however, and it would not require workers to show up to the plant. Moreover, a plant upset with an order from Perdue potentially could challenge it in federal court, where the agriculture secretary’s action — like other agency actions — would be reviewed for reasonableness.
All this, though, is somewhat premature, given that Perdue has not yet issued any order to any meat or poultry producer or processor. Notwithstanding headlines like CNN’s “Trump orders meat processing plants to stay open,” neither Trump nor his agriculture secretary has issued any such mandate. If a plant is closed, it can remain closed. If managers want to close an additional plant, they can. Nothing has changed any of that as a legal matter.
From the article:
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Also: Trump didn’t order meat-processing plants to reopen.
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