Dwayne Nickerson stopped taking orders this week at Sudlersville Meat Locker, a specialty shop that sells local cuts of beef, pork and chicken.
He and his two dozen-plus employees on Maryland’s Eastern Shore need time to fill the orders.
“We cut everything by hand, and we don’t have machines. We process our own animals,” said Mr. Nickerson, who hit 1,110 online orders by noon Tuesday before shutting off online sales for the week, as shoppers frantically search for meat. “It’s been OK, but it’s also been a nightmare.”
In the strain on the nation’s meat-processing centers, with more than a dozen plants across the nation closed because of the coronavirus, many consumers are worried about finding packaged meats at supermarkets. But local meat-lockers — often mom-and-pop operations who cut and package fresh meat, even sometimes slaughter animals — have stepped in to partially help the nation put burgers and steaks on the table.
Patchwork Family Fans, a meat supplier in Missouri, told ABC 17 News in Columbia meat lockers are busy. Newhall Locker in Iowa told a local television station KCRG in Cedar Rapids it was booked until January 2021 with orders. That business typically processes 20 pigs a week.
Even at Mr. Nickerson’s USDA-inspected shop, he’s had to ditch some specialty cuts in favor of “packs” containing simpler cuts for the crush of customers coming from all over the Mid-Atlantic.
“There’s no way we can do all the specialty cut steaks and such,” Mr. Nickerson said.
As to whether his operation could practice social distancing, he said it was difficult.
“We’re in the meat business,” said Mr. Nickerson, who has owned the business for 26 years and runs it with his wife, employing 27 persons. “You are in close quarters and do not stand six feet apart to cut meat.”
President Trump this week invoked the Defense Production Act to declare meat industry employees “essential” during the pandemic, after meat processors began shutting down their plants as workers became infected with COVID-19.
The closures have meant that producers have nowhere to deliver pigs, for example.
Rep. Collin Peterson, Minnesota Democrat and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said up to 160,000 pigs will be euthanized daily.
“We don’t want to euthanize hogs,” Mr. Peterson told reporters, while visiting the JBS plant in Worthington, Minn., where more than 500 employees have contracted the virus. “But we’ve got no choice.”
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