If you’ve been having trouble finding meat products at Costco, it might get easier (or harder) in the coming days.

On the one hand, meat purchases (beef, poultry, and pork products) at the popular giant warehouse will soon be limited to just three items per customer. And that means you’ll no longer have people stocking up with dozens of meat products a day.

However, it’ll probably still be pretty difficult to get meat. The reason for the limitations is because there’s likely going to be a shortage of the stuff.

A CDC report was released of nearly 5,000 meat and poultry processing workers contracting COVID-19, 20 of which have died from the virus. The incident occurred over 115 facilities in 19 states, and since some places haven’t recorded their data, it could actually be more.

Naturally, many facility workers are staying home due to fear of catching coronavirus or because they’re actually sick themselves. And with so few workers able to work, many plants are only operating at half their normal capacity, hence, less meat to dole out to stores like Costco.

Meat plants won’t be closing their doors any time soon either after an executive order was signed last week to keep them open as an essential business.

Sure, meat offers lots of nutritional benefits, like protein and iron, and it’s an easy food to freeze and have on hand for meals. But experts are now suggesting that perhaps this pandemic lends itself to a good time to go vegetarian or vegan, or at least limiting meat to one or two times a week, just temporarily until the meat shortage is resolved.

To learn more about some of those options and the benefits of doing so, check out the video below.

Are you a big meat eater? What do you think of cutting back temporarily due to the meat shortages that are occurring?