Comparative resilience of US and EU meat processing to the Covid19 pandemic

Abstract

Despite the similarities in the drop and recovery patterns of US and EU meat production during the Covid19 pandemic, the literature in the two continents assessed their respective meat processing industries’ resilience differently - resilient in the EU and non-resilient in the US but offered no resilience metrics in support of their assessments. We cast the differing transatlantic views in the context of the economic resilience literature and operationalize several metrics for cattle, pig, and chicken slaughter. We find the US less resilient than the EU in cattle and pig slaughter. Resilience in chicken slaughter depends on which metric is used. We discuss possible drivers of resilience and highlight how our metrics can be used for further research to inform resilience policy on both continents.