Welcome to the Real Vision Daily Briefing. I'm Nick Korea. It's Tuesday, April 28th,

2020. We have Managing Editor Ed Harrison standing by with Ash Pennington ready to give

their macro analysis.

But before we go to them, let's go over the biggest stories today

in markets and the coronavirus.

Starting out, the US meat packing industry

is getting hit hard by COVID-19. At least 19 meat processing

plants have been forced offline as coronavirus cases continue to mount within the

industry. As of yesterday, there have been over 4,100 reported positive cases tied to meat packing plants

at 75 different facilities across 25 states, and at least 18 reported worker deaths across

nine plants, that's according to the Midwest Center for

Investigative Reporting. The four shutdowns are reverberating throughout the supply chain.

Roughly 10% of beef processing capacity has been curtailed, 18% for chickens, and pork capacity reduced by as much as a third.

John Tyson, Chairman of Tyson Foods, noted in a letter on Sunday that, quote,

the food supply is vulnerable and that plants are being forced to

close and millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.

Producers are left with nowhere to sell their livestock and are forced to

depopulate their herds.

According to one report, a major chicken producer had to depopulate over 2 million birds.

The crisis is causing a wide swing in the market for meat.

Pork prices are now well above

their lows and boxed beef is now the most expensive it's ever been. It will be

...