26 April 2021 / 23:50-UTC-07 Tango 06 (07 Ordibehesht 1400/15 Ramadan 1442/16 Ren-Chen 4719)

A recent visit to the Pocatello, Idaho, Fred Meyer revealed that not only are they still out of cat litter, but now they are out of canned cat food!  Notice the blue stickers all over the shelf fronts, they say “Sorry for the inconvenience”.

Across the street at Winco, they are still low on the top selling cat litters, but are also showing fewer stock of canned cat and dog food.  Fred Meyer is also showing a declining stock of canned dog food, but they’re not out of stock, yet.

It doesn’t help that in the past month several brands of pet food, in the U.S., were recalled due to salmonella.

A quick check of the inter-web and I discovered that shortages of pet food is making way more international news than shortages of cat litter, and this time most of the international news media isn’t blaming the pandemic (except for a Fox TV station and other news outlets in New York).

India:  Government orders pet food makers to boost production.

New Zealand:  Global supply issues and shipping delays hit the family cat’s dinner plate.

United States: Cat Food Shortage Leaves Pet Owners in a Bind.

Pet food shortage: Fancy Feast, Friskies and 9 Lives.

These Three Beloved Pet Food Brands Are About to Skyrocket in Price.

I also checked for news regarding the logistics industry.

An interesting report out of India revealed that several India airline companies are now contracting to be CoViD-19 oxygen and vaccine cargo haulers in Hong Kong, India and for “private entities” in the United States.  Also, Singapore government-owned Temasek has partnered with Air India and Amazon to airlift oxygen concentrators.

The fact that so many shipping companies are shifting to more profitable CoViD operations can only negatively affect the supplies of everything else.

Siddharth Jain of Inox Air Products, revealed in a recent interview why the current craze of shipping liquid oxygen to CoViD hospitals is screwing up the supply chain, at least in India: “….this has never been done anywhere in the world. Liquid oxygen is not designed to travel thousands of kilometers. Usually, plants are set up where there is a requirement…” 

In New Zealand, University of Auckland Centre for Supply Chain Management director Tava Olsen said supply chains were supposed to flow smoothly like water, but the whole chain had become ‘lumpy’….blames it partly on China.

Covenant Logistics Group just revealed they’ve been restructuring their operations, and admitted that “…supply chain disruptions, and an intensifying national driver shortage, all of which have continued into the second quarter.”

Crain’s New York Business interviewed an ‘expert’ who stated that the pandemic shift to more e-commerce revealed that there is not enough warehouses (believe it or not) dedicated to stocking merchandise for e-commerce sales.  The expert also said the logistics industry is ramping up its use of A-I and robots.

A new article by Logistics Manager says the advent of the pandemic, Brexit, China trade problems, and the recent blockage of the Suez Canal, revealed that the shift to a logistical system operated more with A-I and robots, and less humans, doesn’t work!  It also agrees with the Crain’s New York Business ‘expert’ who says there just aren’t enough warehouses to support the new logistics system.

At the end of last year the Pocatello, Idaho, Fred Meyer began operating as a ‘fulfilment’ center for their e-commerce and pandemic ‘pick-up’ sales.  The brick-n-mortar store is now serving double duty as an e-commerce warehouse, but that doesn’t mean they’re carrying more stock.

I’ve written several times in the past that the so-called pandemic panic attack buying is actually a major problem with the globalized supply system, in which bigger logistics companies were taking over and shutting down smaller competitors, and switching to a new A-I system with robot workers instead of humans, just before the pandemic hit.

March 2021: PANDEMIC PANIC-ATTACK HITS CAT LITTER? BLAME LOGISTICS COMPETITION AND ROBOTS!

February 2021: GLOBAL SUGAR CRISIS, BETTER STOCK UP NOW!

U.S. Food Crisis: MILITARY DISTRIBUTION SUCCESS PROVES THE MARKET SYSTEM HAS FAILED!

Operation CoViD-19: COVERT OP TO CONTROL THE GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY?