The viruss global spread and confirmed cases in the u. S. County by county. Our coronavirus webpages youre fast and easy way to watch cspans unfiltered coverage of this pandemic. Good evening, the house today passed and the president signed a 2. 2 trillion emergency stimulus bill to help families and businesses impacted by the economic shutdown as the result of the coronavirus. Friday, march 27. Nearly 200 cities, reporting a dire need for taste masked, ventilators, and other medical equipment, in part because of that, the president today invoking ormally invoking the defense production act to require General Motors to produce mo miami, the firstever curfew taking place at 10 00 p. M. Tonight. Developing as this pandemic spreads coast to coast. We want to focus tonight on the impact it is having on Grocery Stores of the food supply and the Restaurant Industry. For the first halfhour here are 2027488000. S, and if you are a grocery worker or employed by a grocery tour Grocery Store chain, 2027488002. And also at facebook. Com cspan. A lot to talk about the next hour and we thank you for joining us for this evening addition of washington journal. Two members of Congress Today confirming they are battling covid19. Thet from Pennsylvania Republican congressman mike kelly from the 16th esther confirming today 16th district. Experiencingrted flulike symptoms and consultant my primary care physician with my doctor ordering a test site obtained at the drive through. I test came back positive. I will serve from my home until i fully recover. On twitter another member of congress now totaling five members dealing with covid19, in the house of presented us, conga cement Joe Cunningham from south carolina, confirming he also has the illness. Eiffel fine, i feel great. I feel fine and have to stay at home for a few days. This will not stop me from working for home from my constituents in the low country and fighting for low country businesses and workers. This means that i was not able to go to d. C. To vote on the stimulus bill. There,i could have been i would have been there and i would have voted in favor of it. Quarantine, i am lucky that i do not have many symptoms outside of the mild loss of taste and smell. There are others who are not as lucky. Host that update from congressman Joe Cunningham, from south carolina. Lets look at the numbers courtesy of Johns Hopkins university, as we do every night. World0 cases around the and 26,000 confirmed deaths, a most 27,000 at this point. The u. S. Passing the 100,000 mark, now one had 1000 confirmed cases confirmed cases in the u. S. The food and Restaurant Industry had particular hard. This from the Philadelphia Inquirer by nicholas bertram, the head of giant, a grocery chain in the eastern half of the country including pennsylvania. Grocery stores have become essential businesses and a lifeline for americans to stay healthy. Grocers continue to do their part. We turn to our customers to ask all to limit their purchases to what they truly need right now. Intois time, it has turned something more like panic buying. Again, to all i say please purchase only what you need, and leave the rest per your neighbor. If you find yourself with a surplus of canned goods and nonperishables, consider donating them to your local food bank. Is Shelley Miller with the university of michigan, school of environment and sustainability, the director of the program and the environment. We appreciate you being with us here on cspan. Thank you for the invitation. Host let me begin by those comments by the head of giant foods. Guest it is spot on. The issue here is not a supply issue. We have plenty of food in the supply chain. Food justen producing as well as we normally do. We have not had major shocks as far as climate drought or any recent to suspect food systems are being disrupted and so i think what people are seeing is empty shelves and a Grocery Store, they get concerns theres not going to be food there in the future and that is something not the case. We really are just seeing a system that is trying to happily adapt to a change in demand. The system needs a chance to catch up to where consumers are, and catching up to consumer demand. Panic oris no need to horrid groceries. Need to of food no hoard groceries. Host what is in the psyche of the termination to buy up all the toilet paper, milk, bread and supplies . Guest there a lot of complex sectors happening. From eight Human Behavior standpoint, once we perceive also, try to catch up to that commodity and purchase it ourselves, but there are a lot of other things going on which are changing demand patterns. We usually eat out a lot more. Most of our food dollars go outside the home, in typical situations. So, Grocery Stores are also now having to keep up with a shift in amount overall, from restaurants and cafeterias and schools to Grocery Store and household purchases. So there are a lot of factors happening. Buying, ands panic some is also a change in overall demand patterns and Shopping Behavior. Host and we will talk with sean candidate with the National Restaurant association about that issue. As you deal with this virus and pandemic which is likely going to continue into april, how are Grocery Stores adjusting and changing with the food supply, with the dissertation of these products . Guest sure. One of the big things to recognize is that supply chains have been optimized to have justintime delivery. Grocery stores are not equipped with major warehouses in back. So there really is a justintime system, to get food from warehouses from factories to warehouses to dissipation to stores themselves, and then into the sarah onto the actual shelf. So when you have an unprecedented amount for a particular item youre going to have to adjust in different ways. You see retailers doing a number of things. Diverting the district and sent her and trying to go straight from a factory to the stores themselves. One of the things governors have done in executor borders, is to relax weight limitations on tracks, so more products in their executive orders, is relax weight limits on tracks t rucks, so more products can get onto trucks and be delivered to stores. Trying to optimize and adjust to the new wave of things. Host if you are in the grocery 2027488002, we would love to hear from you. University of michigan the School Sustainability and natural resources, how is Research Relevant . I look at commodities to assess their environ mental impact. I usually look at food systems and food waste produced throughout the supply chain. Thetrying to understand Environmental Impacts of products, and how to improve logistics and reduce waste through the supply chain. And also how to reduce the overall Environmental Impact of our food from the agricultural system to the household. Host lets go to mark from two lavista, california. Good evening. Caller good evening. In two lavista in chula vista, and the Grocery Stores, everything is gone, the water and the food. The same thing with restaurants, they are all closed down or only doing take out. Storestwo uncles who own in utica, new york and in a dairy, new hatcher, who are challenged with this business problem. Derry, nh. Looking at this economy we had and now going into this recession and perhaps we hope not depression. Host thank you for the call and your perspective. Did you want to respond, shelley . Guest i think we are definitely seeing that throughout. Overall, businesses are being stressed. We are seeing restaurant workers, that is coming up later in the show. It is a great perspective to hear from what individuals are feeling and experiencing on the ground. Host this is a headline from the pittsburgh postgazette. It involves a family owned Grocery Store in eastern pennsylvania. Who intentionally coughed on 35,000 for the food at a Grocery Store, that food was thrown away. They spent hours trying to clean it up. The woman is being charged. Again, it gives you a sense of where the country is. This is just one example. Aret stories like that disappointing on so many levels. Aspects a Public Health and human dimensions. One of the major concerns, the food system now, is that all food workers are considered essential workers. There is a lot of concern about keeping Worker Health and safety as primary. Is unfortunate to see those kinds of behaviors. We need to keep the health and safety of our food workforce in order to maintain consistent supply. We have plenty of food. We are not experiencing shortages in supply chain. But we also need workers to be able to show up to work, in order for all of us to get food. I think it is critically important to respect our food workers as frontline workers, and to respect the health and safety of that. Lossestion to the food that could be used to reduce potential temporary shortages. Host carolyn in ohio, good evening. , iler yes i want to commend live on the border of ohio and West Virginia. And i shop at krogers. Talked with management there, and they had said things such as how they have got additional to come to the store that were not scheduled. I got to tell them how much that was appreciated, that they had the stock in, because of their foresight to do that. Commend the kroger employees and West Virginia and belpre, ohio, because they have been absolutely wonderful. They are under so much pressure. And they are working so hard. It is appreciated by customers like myself. I also want to say, i have not i said come one the border of West Virginia and ohio, i have not seen the horrible things i have heard about customers, how they are fighting over things. What i saw when i was in line, different people were trying to let other people go ahead. Like if they were holding 24 packs of water or whatever. I was one of the people that offered the person to go ahead and they were like, oh, i have already been offered that. So, many times the people in our area, our offering help, and not fighting. So i wanted to put that out there. That it is not just everyplace is fighting. I said, ohioWest Virginia, they seem to appreciate the workers, appreciate kroger and try to make it better for everybody. That is my opinion. Host carolyn, thank you for the call. From ohio. Shelley miller . Guest that is a wonderful point and i think that echoes most peoples experiences. This really is bringing out the humanity and most of the people i would say. There really are relatively few bad actors in this system. I think that often we are attributing to overall panic buying what actually is not panic buying. It really is a fund mental shift in demand, that Grocery Stores were not optimized for. We are not working in an optimal environment. Fundamental shift. Most people are not panic buying, their dust stocking up for they are just stocking up for one or two weeks, buying what their family needs. But that is a different Shopping Behavior where they might normally go to the grocerys door two or three go to the Grocery Store two or three times a week and not stock up on staples. Demandseeing shifts in that is responsive to the guidance we are seeing from Health Officials, as a change from eating out to eating at home. Trucks, andint of Grocery Store managers changing, everyone i have talked to in the food system is scrabbling to make it happen. Job,oing an incredible really trying to get resources out to consumers. Host from sacramento, california, diane, your next. Good evening. Caller high. Ive a couple of questions. Hi. Go toher countries safeway warehouse Corporate Office and buy out there were house supplies their house supplies . The point of global trade and trying to figure out food balances and things like that, right now what we are experiencing is not an issue of needing to go to other countries or to change overall trade patterns at this time. We actually have plenty of food in the system, in our Current System and in our dissertation centers. The issue is in our distribution centers. But there are only so many tru cks and workers and docks. We are not seeing a shortage of food, we have sufficient supplies. We are having a hard time with the logistics of the system, and trying to get over some of the bottlenecks we are currently seeing in the system, just because is not optimized for the current demand patterns. Certainly, global trade is something we continue to do and we will see how things play out in the months ahead. But really, the issue is more of the logistics catching up to the change in demand. Have a sense when you see that some eyes heading are the road to krogers wegmans or routes or winndixie, just how much food is in that truck . Guest it is many, many pallets of food. I do not have actual numbers. When you talk about what a normal semitruck holds on a biweekly delivery schedule, it might deliver a few cases of pita butter, it is not have to deliver pallets of peanut butter. That is what we are seeing in the changes in demand and changes in the type of food people are buying. People are stocking up on pantry items and staple foods and all that makes sense. Usually you do not see everyone buying flour at the same time. It staggers over the course of a year. That is what we are seeing is all of these staple foods having to be delivered by the pallet load, rather than cases. To meires more trucks thats meant. Host we are talking about our nations food supply in light of the pandemic. Our guest is Shelley Miller from the university of michigan. From indiana. Good evening. Caller good evening. My name is david. I am 57 years old and i work for a big chain that im not going to name. I had to leave the grocery business seven days ago. Preconditions, to two stents in my heart, emphysema, and copd. Say toam trying to professional and one day i decided to say hey, i want the simple life. I work in a Grocery Store. But i have been so afraid of my fellow workers. A lot of us do not have gloves. And masks. Ok . Are unprotected. I am rightance and now being isolated. We all do the best we can. But i had to make a decision. The best we can for americans and grocery workers. I just want them to understand we are doing our part, but i had to protect myself paradigm under scrutiny i had to protect myself. But i am under scrutiny. I did the right thing because im vulnerable. But i am afraid to lose my job. I do not want that to happen. We need to reunite. Im a history teacher. We have not read night at since world war ii. I will tell you what, we have not reunited since world war ii. Host david, good luck to you and thank you for sharing your story. Helley miller, i think probably represents many employs around the country at grocery chains. Guest i think that is true and it highlights the human elements to the folks who are working every day to get food to everybodys household. Thank you, david, for being there. Everyone needs to make the correct decisions for their own health. The health and safety of the workforce is primary at this point. It also goes well beyond the Grocery Store workers. We are talking about people working in Food Processing facilities, folks working in farms and the planting season moving forward. All of those aspects of our food system do depend on a healthy workforce. Of those workers throughout the chain. So thank you for the call. Host good evening, sam in van nuys, california. Shelley,es, thank you, for taking my call. Should we be concerned about buying meets . The origin of the virus is supposed to be from animals. Meats. I wonder if there should be caution we should exercise buying meat. And i do not see grocery workers putting on masks and that is a concern to me because i am a senior stata center. Host thank you for the call and the question. I am a senior citizen. To thei will defer Health Experts on how the virus is transmitted. All of the evidence we have heard from Health Experts are that groceries are safe to eat. We are continuing health inspections, food inspections, are continuing. Every part of the supply chain from agriculture inspections, to food inspections prior to distribution, are all ongoing. Itself isystem to be inspected and safe. And again, the health and safety of workers are primary and i defer to the Health Experts on how to keep them as safe as possible. Host but the pressure on Grocery Stores and ploys to make sure that shelves are stocked, that the cashiers are sanitizing free time you hit the touchpad, you sign something, you pick up your groceries, you are pushing that grocery cart, there is a lot at stake. Guest absolutely. You see many retailers who have taken the steps of reducing their hours. That is not because of an overall problem of food supply. It is largely in order to give workers the space to be able to disinfect their environment and clean their environment. And also to have a chance to catch up to restock shelves and replenish goods. That is one of the ways the system is responding. Host janices next from washington. Good evening. I am from okanogan, washington. For the smaller communities here, we still have a lot of problems with people hoarding. Im sure it is everywhere. But it is annoying for us. I think also the people in the different stores, their prices fluctuate as well. Their pric