- Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
- Pork

In reality for us, yesterday The Fresh Market was limiting customers to only 3 lbs. of chuck and chicken.  They ran out of chicken.  I asked the manager about what I had heard about a food shortage caused by disruption in the food chain.  She indicated that pork was hard to get due to some big processing plants being closed.  She also said that Tyson has closed several chicken processing plants, so there is not as much chicken, especially skinless boneless breast, in the supply chain.  So if you like chicken, get it while you can because it may be in short supply within the next few days.

OTHER NOTES:
A poultry-processing plant in Delaware has made the "difficult but necessary" decision to kill 2 million chickens as worker shortages push the US meat supply chain toward a breaking point.  Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., a cooperative that works with about 1,300 farmers, said it looked at all other options, "including allowing another chicken company to transport and process the chickens and taking a partially processed product to rendering facilities to utilize for other animal feed" but ultimately decided on euthanasia.  

"If no action were taken, the birds would outgrow the capacity of the chicken house to hold them," the company said, adding that the birds would be killed "using approved, humane methods" and farmers would still be compensated.

It's a small percentage of the 609 million chickens that Delmarva's farmers raised in 2019, but the interruption highlights a problem facing meat producers across the US: Meat-slaughtering operations can be only so automated.

Tyson, one of the largest meat producers, said in a full-page advertisement in national newspapers on Sunday that "the food supply chain is breaking" as workers get sick and plants are forced to close.  "There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed," Tyson said in the ad.

Three major pork plants in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa — which collectively represent 15% of pork production, according to CNN — were forced to close indefinitely in April.

Produce is being left to rot, and milk is being poured down the drain as closed restaurants, hotels, and schools upend the usual demand for food.