OK i saw the thread about difficulty finding Milk in North Hills but why is Meat of all kinds being ripped off of the shelves? THE STORM is OVER for crying out loud! But Walmart in Brownwood as well as all other grocery stores are wiped out! Is it possible the power outages cause loss of freezer meat supplies. We have a fridge with freezer on the porch and it was great during 53 hours of no electricity but our big freezer in the house was starting to melt when the juice came back on. There were not even frozen patties in the freezer section. Wife did find one tube of breakfast sausage that everyone else had missed. Its CRAZY!

Utilities being off at processing plants. Wife hasn't worked in a week because the beef plant in San Angelo has no gas.

Folks foolishly go into panic buying mode when the weather dudes start talking about snow and bitter cold temps. In the Metromess, when the TV stations start talking about snow, and the cities start prepping the roads and getting the sand trucks ready, people hit the grocery stores almost every time and strip the milk, bread, egg and water aisles. Happens every time even if no snow shows up. Everytime!

SNOMAGGEDON!!!

I would assume that getting livestock to market was halted because of the storm. As was processing without electricity. Add in people panic buying. There's your answer.
Our freezer stays filled. If power goes out for an extended period. I still have meat, a grill, and wood. I have enough to keep my family and neighbors fed for a few days.

You have a generator you use to keep your freezer going?

Some stores that lost power for an extended period of time had to clear shelves and throw food away due to food not being kept at proper temperature. They could not sell it for safety reasons.

went to sams yesterday in the hunt for eggs and they had plenty of meat as well!!

A lot of the panic buying is people not wanting to be in the situation they are in now. Other people snatching everything up whether they need it or not, gotta get their slice of it too.

I could use six to eight cans of that potted meat if ya got any extra.

This is gonna sound funny cause it's real easy to take your stuff and put it outside at your house to keep it frozen. Not the same in commercial environment. There is a cold chain protocol commercially. When stores and warehouses loose control of the temps and cant know whether the cold chain was broke or not they cant take a risk selling it. Grocery stores, Sam's, suppliers etc dont want the liability. Easier to chunck it and file an insurance claim in a situation like this. Even if they dont have that coverage it's easier to just write off. Add to that, there is not a magical pile of meat just sitting waiting to restock. The supply chain has to flow from cattle raisers to feed lots, trucking, processing, distribution.. if you recall during covid shut down small blips at the processors caused chaos. We were scrabbling for ground beef at my business daily and I had a contract directly with a processor. It will correct itself fairly quickly this time assuming processors dont have too much damage at facilities. We reopened as soon as we could but it's a challenge getting stuff right now. My food vendor delivered this morning. Also remember that the employees at these facilities are equally affected, their houses flooded, they lost power etc so companies all through the process are scrambling to get people to work

And let me add that I think beef rebounds quickly, poultry may be a longer unwind, citrus is gonna pop up as an issue as well.

No actually I dont have a generator but we had several propne devices including heat stove. With the power out I emptied the inside freezer and hauled everything to my granddaughters playhouse where the Artic Blast kept everything frozen til the power came back on.

Another issue was that our power outages only last a few hours under normal circumstances. When we went into the second day it hit us that this wasnt a normal outage. And Oncor has a crummy phone system when it comes to checking on the outage!

Lots of this going on.

I only skimmed the above replies but don’t think I see anyone mentionning logistics. Just about all truck shipments were delayed from Monday on I that has to be a factor as well as what was mentioed above.