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. 2021 Nov:181:108459.
doi: 10.1016/j.meatsci.2021.108459. Epub 2021 Feb 11.

The Covid-19 pandemic and meat supply chains

Jill E Hobbs  1
Affiliations

The Covid-19 pandemic and meat supply chains

Jill E Hobbs. Meat Sci. 2021 Nov.

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended societies, economic activity, and business environments. With a focus on the meat processing sector, this paper considers the short, medium, and potential long-term implications of the pandemic for food supply chains. A series of short-run demand and supply shocks affected the food system. The pandemic has generated a lively discourse around the adaptability and resilience of food supply chains in the medium to longer term. Scale and scope economies in meat processing offer significant cost and efficiency advantages, while a more dispersed industry structure can be more flexible. The pandemic is likely to accelerate the adoption of automation and digitalization within food supply chains. The Covid-19 pandemic also focused consumer attention on the food system and the nature of food supply chains. Consumers' underlying food values may shape their response to uncertainty during a pandemic. The pandemic offers lessons for the food industry in proactively identifying and addressing points of vulnerability within supply chains.

Keywords: Automation; Demand and supply shocks; Digitalization; Economies of scale; Food values; Resiliency.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Relative importance of food values across studies.
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