Meat supply at risk? After two major disruptions in a year, industry confronts vulnerabilities

The recent cyberattack on massive meat processing conglomerate JBS has highlighted, for the second time over the past year, the vulnerabilities of the heavily centralized and concentrated slaughterhouse industry in the U.S. and across the world.

The cyberattack, which targeted global computer networks at the Brazillian-based JBS and led to a brief, targeted shutdown by the company, comes almost exactly a year after fears of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic saw slaughterhouses across the U.S. shutting down for weeks at a time, raising fears of looming meat shortages and instances of panic-induced shortages. 

With vaccines widely available and more and more aspects of everyday life returning to normal, fears of COVID plant shutdowns have largely abated, at least for now. Yet the JBS attack has underscored the vulnerabilities of the meat processing industry to cyberattacks in a world where cyberterrorists are growing increasingly refined and exacting. 

Meatpacking in the U.S. is largely controlled by just four megafirms: JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and National Beef. That kind of massive consolidation is not foreign to other industries — Microsoft reportedly commands more than three-quarters of the desktop operating system market worldwide, while various pharmaceutical products are often similarly concentrated in just a few companies. 

Yet few industries, when disrupted, loom as large in the mind as food: Even before meat plants began briefly shutting down last year, panic-buying was observed in supermarkets across the country as consumers snatched up canned goods, dried pasta and other groceries out of fear of global supply chain disruptions.

"The meat industry has been a target" of cyber attacks, Keith Belk, an animal sciences professor at Colorado State University, told Just the News. "And because it is labor-intensive and very visual, it also clearly was vulnerable to the pandemic — although much was learned about preventing similar breakdowns in the future during the past 14 months."

Belk argued that "the entire food supply chain is actually vulnerable to a wide range of potential attacks," something that has led to voluntary preparedness protocols among various food industries.
 
"I'm not certain that such vulnerability assessments have typically included cyber-attacks, but they are certainly likely to in the future," he said. "This could help to prevent such disruptions in the future."

Jim Dickson, an animal science professor at Iowa State University, argued that the meat industry's massive centralization does not "necessarily present any unique dangers" from such attacks and disruptions.

The global food industry "is highly centralized, and relies on the interaction of all of the individual components (production, processing, transportation, storage, distribution, etc) to function," Dickson acknowledged.

But "the biggest issue in any manufacturing operation, whether it is food, automobiles or consumer electronics, is complacency," he maintained. "The attitude that 'it can't happen here.' I hope that the latest event with JBS will be a wake up call for all of the companies."