 Econometric assessment of the effects of COVID-19 outbreaks on U.S. meat production and plant utilization with plant-level dataJoseph Cooper, Vincent Breneman, Meilin Ma, Jayson Lusk, Josh Maples and Shawn Arita Food Policy, 2023, vol. 119, issue C Abstract: This paper quantifies the impact of the COVID-19 disruption on U.S. meatpacking production. We employ a confidential plant-level meatpacking plant data set from USDA that gives daily livestock (cattle, swine, broilers) slaughter by individual firms and their individual plants. We found a larger underutilization rate of processing capacity for larger-sized beef and pork plants during the peak of plant slowdowns in April-May 2020, while no such relationship was found for broiler plants. In our panel analysis of beef packing plants, we found that higher COVID-19 infection rates in a county were associated with greater plant disruptions, but that plants appear to have been able to adjust relatively quickly to these disruptions. Our empirical analysis suggests a beef plant distribution with fewer large plants could have meant smaller shocks to production during the initial surge of COVID-19 disruptions. However, beef plant size was significantly less important to maximizing utilization of processing capacity after the initial surge. Keywords: Meatpacking; Livestock; Cattle; Swine; Broilers; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:119:y:2023:i:c:s0306919223001203 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102522 Access Statistics for this article Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier |
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