93.9 The Eagle – The News and Talk of Columbia, MO
Are you worried there won’t be any hamburger left on the shelf the next time you go to the store?
Mid-Missouri Republican congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer has farmed cattle in St. Elizabeth his entire life. He says there is plenty of meat to go around.
“When the restaurants closed down, basically, there was a backup of that sort of meat in the coolers and the lockers became full. And that’s another problem.”
Rep. Luetkemeyer says the president was right to order meatpacking plants back to work. That’s even though many, like Burger’s Smokehouse in California, have confirmed cases of coronavirus among their employees.
HyVee is one of the grocery store chains putting limits on how much meat you can buy per trip.
More from The Associated Press:
The attorneys general for 11 Midwestern states have urged the Justice Department to investigate market concentration and potential price fixing by meatpackers in the cattle industry during the coronavirus pandemic. The state attorneys general wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to U.S. Attorney General William Barr that the concentrated market structure of the beef industry makes it particularly susceptible to market manipulation, particularly during times of food insecurity, such as the current COVID-19 crisis. The letter was signed by attorneys general in North Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming.
