You have everything here so completely backwards it's going to be tricky to unwind. Meat production has been massively subsidized in America for decades, resulting in terrible outcomes in every way- massive emissions contributing to climate change, polluted rivers and lakes, antibiotic resistant bacteria development, obesity, heart disease, colon cancer. As people have become aware of all these negatives, more people are choosing to eat less meat. There have been no meaningful regulatory changes to feed crops, although the world would surely be a better place if some of the existing subsidies were removed.
The meat industry has long relied on (often illegal) immigrants to work in butchering and meat packing plants, under unsafe conditions for low pay. Covid and increased border patrolling have disrupted this labor supply, making them cut back even further on safety, resulting in a couple plants experiencing predictable problems from years of cutting-corners.
Finally, Americans drastically overestimate their need for protein, due to decades of marketing campaigns, going back to steroid-injecting bodybuilders & athletes claiming that their muscles were due to "eating protein" because they couldn't publicly admit it was due to injecting anabolic drugs.