Most people in the United States had never experienced empty store shelves, but the pandemic in 2020 provided evidence of the lack of robustness in the meat supply chain. To help shore up the meat supply, the United States Department of Agriculture, as directed by the Biden Administration, allocated $1 billion toward strengthening meat supplies. The investment was spread across many programs, which included several different grants including the Meat and Poultry Processor Expansion Program, the Inspection Readiness grants, the Local Meat Capacity Program, and support for lenders to the meat industry.
Programs were also announced for workforce training grants through other USDA programs such as the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative and the Small Business Administration. Descriptions of the entire initiative can be found at https://usda.gov/meat , including links to funding recipients and other types of support. To ensure that grant and loan funds resulted in successful improvements and expansion to the meat supply, a network of technical assistance experts, the “Meat and Poultry Processor Technical Assistance (MPPTA)”, were contracted to aid all meat processing businesses including those that received loan or grants as part of the various programs.