JBS cyberattack not impacting ability to buy beef, pork locally

LEE COUNTY, Fla. – The JBS cyberattack hasn’t impacted local residents ability to buy beef or pork in Southwest Florida.

Mario’s Meat Market co-owner Michael Pica said that he hasn’t seen any impacts on his own Fort Myers store’s meat supply or the secondary suppliers he gets meat from. He wants it to stay that way.

“I’m not that worried yet,” Pica said. “Still a little too soon.”

When cyberattackers hit major international beef and pork supplier JBS over the holiday weekend, Pico immediately heard about it from his secondary suppliers. JBS had shut down US plants to deal with the issue.

“By next week, we’ll have a better idea to see what secondary suppliers are going to be doing,” he said. “I’m pretty confident JBS will get on top of this relatively quick and hopefully you don’t feel the strong impact.”

JBS USA posted an update yesterday, in which CEO Andre Nogueira said that “given the progress our IT professionals and plant teams have made in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational” Wednesday.

Florida Gulf Coast University economist Victor Klaar said if all goes well with that, this issue should be behind us fairly quickly, likely within a week. The larger picture is what may be more concerning.

“We’ve now learned through the Colonial pipeline experience and this experience that we’re vulnerable in terms of cyber technology in ways that we just didn’t know before,” said Klaar.

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