An executive at Tyson Foods is warning that there are serious problems within the food chain that are about to have serious ramifications on the ability for Americans to access food.
“The food supply chain is breaking,” wrote John Tyson, who serves as chairman of the board at Tyson Foods, in a full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
“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 wrote in the ad that also was posted on the company’s website. He is informing the American people that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear” and this will negatively affect the consumer choices that Americans have during a time of unprecedented crisis.
“Tyson Foods has a responsibility to feed our nation and the world. The government bodies at the national, state, county and city levels must unite in a comprehensive, thoughtful and productive way to allow our team members to work in safety without fear, panic or worry. The private and public sectors must come together. As a country, this is our time to show the world what we can do when working together,” Tyson wrote in his letter to the public.
This is another disastrous impact for the economy caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which has already devastated the service sector beyond repair:
The coronavirus pandemic and mass hysteria that has followed it will have a long-lasting negative impact on the food service industry, according to a recent study.
A survey from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) of over 4,000 restaurant owners has indicated that 11 percent of restaurant owners believe they will have to close up shop permanently with three percent saying they have already closed their doors for good. These calculations extrapolated across the entire industry mean that over 110,000 restaurants will be forced to close forever within a month.
In the first 22 days of March, restaurants lost an estimated $25 billion in sales and over three million jobs because of coronavirus-related economic peril. The consumption-based economy has evaporated immediately, and the ramifications could be dire.
Roger Lipton, a restaurant industry investor and commentator, is calling this the “restaurant apocalypse” and sees the business heading into uncharted territory where the damages could be unlike anything that has happened in the industry before.
“Any pundit who thinks that they’re going to use a recent history — and by recent history, I mean the last 100 years, including the Depression — as a template for what is going to go on here? They’re kidding themselves,” Lipton said to Business Insider on Monday.
Unless America is opened up and soon, the results could be as bad as another Great Depression impacting the public health more negatively than coronavirus ever could.