The U.S. Meat Export Federation says vessel congestion has worsened in recent weeks at West Coast ports, which is a growing concern for red meat exporters.
According to USMEF senior director of export services and access Travis Arp, smooth cargo movement through West Coast ports is critical to the success and profitability of the U.S. red meat industry.
?With many of our most important export markets being in Asia, really a large portion of the beef and pork that we export out of the United States has to go through those West Coast ports like Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, and Tacoma,? Arp said. ?Making sure product transits through those ports in a timely manner is important for us servicing many of these extremely important customers in Asia.?
Arp says the situation has worsened over the last few weeks as incoming cargo from Asia has increased, and COVID-19 has limited the availability of workers needed to handle these shipments in a timely manner.
?Ports have been hit hard ? as many industries have ? by COVID restrictions to where there just isn?t the available labor to get these ships loaded and off-loaded in an efficient manner,? Arp said. ?That?s led to a lot of these inbound vessels having to sit and anchor for days and sometimes weeks at a time while they wait for the available labor to bring those ships into call. As cargo continues to come in from the Midwest, a lot of those containers end up having to sit at the terminals just waiting for an available vessel.?
Arp notes that some U.S. pork and beef shipments are also being delayed by lack of available space on westbound vessels, as a growing number of companies based in Asia are paying large premiums to have empty containers shipped back to them rather than wait for containers carrying U.S. cargo.
USMEF is working with other trade associations to raise awareness of this situation, as the backlog has the potential to impact the entire red meat supply chain and many other sectors of U.S. agriculture.
