NMPF’s Detlefsen, Leader of Food-Chain Coordination Effort, Says Grocery Shortages Will Ease
March 19, 2020
Clay Detlefsen, senior vice president of regulatory and environmental affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation, says that based on information he’s received while serving in another role — as the private-sector chair of the Food and Agricultural Sector Coordinating Council – shortages of consumer staples in grocery stores strained by responses to coronavirus-related restrictions should begin easing, as soon as within a week.
“There is plenty of food in this country. There is no food shortage,” said Detlefsen in an NMPF podcast. “We have a bit of a distribution problem caused largely by consumers, in essence, over-consuming.”
Still, coronavirus-related challenges to food supply chains go well beyond store shelves, he said. The good news, Detlefsen said, is that private-sector and government coordination is “light-years” better than in past crises such as Hurricane Katrina. The Food and Agriculture Sector Coordinating Council, set up after the Sept. 2001 terror attacks to share information between government agencies and private businesses, now has years of experience dealing with food-chain crises and has been dealing with coronavirus concerns for weeks.
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