Resilience of Meat Supply Chains during and after COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

To protect their population during pandemic outbreak, countries apply several preventive restrictions and even shut down their economies to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Since food supply chains in developed countries are complicated and dependent on their external suppliers, these restrictions cause not only economic but also social tension. The limited access to raw materials, packaging material and labour force result in the increasing prices of food products, which forces the population to refuse from quality food products. In the European Union food supply chains, which are negatively affected by protectionist elements and COVID-19 restrictions, the room for manoeuvre of Latvia’s small open economy is limited. The current paper analyses the impact of COVID-19 crisis on global food industry, providing a deeper insight into the case study of Latvia meat supply chains’ experience in overcoming pandemic risks. The research outcomes lead to the conclusion that although COVID-19 impact during first breakout has not caused unexpected and serious consequences for the meat sector companies, the main internal and external risks are associated with further uncertainty and instability in the EU markets. Based on extensive analysis of meat sector specifics, the authors have summarized the recommendations for meat sector companies to better prepare for further potential pandemic situations. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01257 Full Text: PDF

GIS approach for mapping novel coronavirus in northern state of India, Jammu and Kashmir

“…The unexpected lockdown has serious consequences on the meat sector. The analysis was prepared after specific recommendations from the meat companies (Grinberga-Zalite et al 2021 ). The study area Jammu and Kashmir faces huge loss of life by COVID-19 by low medical facility.…”

Causal Impacts of Epidemics and Pandemics on Food Supply Chains: A Systematic Review

“…The change in consumer behavior during pandemics and epidemics also interferes negatively with FSCs, especially on the types of products purchased. During a disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people become cautious about their spending, buying less often but in larger volumes, preferring small grocery stores, and purchasing food online to avoid agglomerations [13,80,81]. The initial peak in demand due to panic buying behaviors was also a problem [82,83].…”

“…In general, the authors state that short chains play an essential role in reinforcing the resilience of food networks, contributing to the stability of access to food in periods of crisis [95]. In this way, short chains can strengthen the resilience of the food supply [80,93,96]. Still, it is essential to analyze the particularities of each type of supply chain to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different policies as well as intrinsic issues associated with implementation and adaptation.…”

“…Absenteeism monitoring [69] Risk monitoring [103] Multiple sourcing [131] Information management and policy coordination with governments [12] Workforce adjustment Guidelines on seasonal workers and migrant workers [10,111] Temporary workers [80,114] Remote workforce training [93] Optimizing the familial or community workforce [87] Activities automation Mechanization and automation of activities with technology [8,56,79,101,132] Digital agronomic trainings and information through programs facilitated collaboratively with government [79] Computer-based statistical models [101] Greater reliance on automation [113] Health and Safety Protocols…”

“…Production volume changes (production rate) or stopping production (stoppage of production) [7,10,12,38,48,56,63,66,70,72,74,75,79,80,87,100,106,108,110,113,114,129,131,134,137,142,152,162,[169][170][171][172][173][174] Stability and business continuity plans…”