CITY HALL—As concerns grow that the meat supply chain is likely to be affected by plant shutdowns due to Covid-19, Chicago’s secretive Meat Council has convened to consider accessing the city’s vast stockpile of pork products kept in secured vaults under the city.
As Chicago’s famously carnivorous population took notice of signs in grocery stores limiting customers to one pork product per customer and clarifying that “yes, bacon counts,'' the city’s Meat Council quickly met to discuss ways of keeping Chicagoans fed in the manner we’ve grown accustomed to.
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The Meat Council, created in 1906 to plot the death of Upton Sinclair, is highly secretive and said to comprise of members of the meat packing and restaurant industries, a seventeen year old boy who claims to be “The Sausage King of Chicago” and the brain of Harold’s Chicken Shack founder Harold Pierce in a robot body. The Meat Council, which traditionally exists to ensure everyone in Chicago knows that meat is delicious and what condiments are acceptable, can in times of crisis access the estimated thirty thousand tons of meat products held in vaults, caves and piles under the city.
“We’ve got eight hundred barrels of ham that we could pump into the city’s meat economy,” said a council member who wished to remain anonymous but kept hinting at their identity. “My fellow council members might not want to hear this, but it’s time to act or this city will run perilously close to not having ham on hand at all times. I personally want Chicagaons to be able to have a handful of ham whenever they want, but I guess I’m sort of the ‘hotdog’ of the council. No one asked, but I have no problems with the capital of Austria. That’s right. I have no ‘beef’ with ‘Vienna.’”
“Some people on this council seem to think pork grows on trees,” said another anonymous council member, “and while we are working on that, we can’t just crank the handle on the sausage vats under Willis Tower and flood the city with meat. We could, but what happens when barbeque season is upon us and we’ve eaten through our stockpile? Are we going to grill fish? Family pets?”
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The council meeting—which Chicago Genius Herald reporters were able to attend because our Daddy is rich—was frequently interrupted by arguments over whether and how much pork could be released from the high security meat vaults and which members of the council needed to “pull [their] head out of their ass.”
Some suggested just accessing the bacon supply that lines the Red and Blue line subway tunnels, but others warned that that bacon is load-bearing. Still other council members called for a full “a-pork-calypse” scenario that would include releasing the full supply of chop, rack, and bone-in pork products, opening Al Capone’s secret prosciutto vault, declaring chicharrón a bread and converting Buckingham Fountain into a blood fountain.
“My God, man,” said one senior member of the council, “pull your head out of your ass.”
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While the council deliberates, Chicagoans are likely to see less meat on grocery store shelves and are encouraged in this troubling time to limit themselves to only small pinches of ham instead of fistfuls.
