FOOD Shortages England

The whole of the UK was dragged out of the EU due to Brexit whether voted for or not. Are the shortages only in England? No, the fallout is UK wide. Empty shelves, but a least we now have a blue passport.

It is definitely due to a lack of lorry drivers plus fewer puckers! Also, factor in it is school holidays and people are buying more to feed families all day!
Self catering holidays might account for empty shelves in some areas!
Dare I suggest start growing your own in a small area if you can ! Buy less, eat fresh, cook from scratch as much as possible ! No panic buying though !!

Can't remember the last time I got everything I ordered on my weekly shop! Definitely not just the cities as our local shops are struggling. Who could possibly have predicted that the EU workers were so essential to the smooth running of the UK!

Pickers !!!

This is more to do with the fact that the price of our food has been pushed so low, that those in the supply chain have had to find workers happy to work at ridiculously low wages. We have seen salaries for those at the top become many more times the lowest pay over the years. Cheap labour - lorry drivers from the EU - where living costs (housing etc) are far lower, have been used. Most other European countries pay a lot more for their food (ie the going rate) than us. Surely it is better to pay a little more for your food, and the workers to have better pay and conditions? We have an obesity epidemic in the UK, so surely if food is more expensive but the lower paid workers are paid more, that will be better? There has also been a shortage of driving test slots due to Covid. And many drivers have chosen to do local deliveries - since the pandemic there has been huge demand for local delivery drivers.

With the number unemployed in this country there should be no shortage of workers.

I wonder how old people are that have fond memories of rationing? On the basis that you would have to be born in say 1920 to have been running a home from 1939 onwards, then there are a lot of people approaching their 100th birthday on here. I am not wishing to offend, but fond memories of wartime shortages are nonsense, your parents shield you from the worry and stress. If anyone wants to return to basic eating, to a puritanical approach to food shopping then they are completely free to do so, but some of us like choice, like variety.

There's definitely challenges in transporting food to supermarkets and smaller shops post Brexit and during Covid-19. It's hardly scaremongering, it's been reported on BBC News programmes over the last few weeks.

There's still plenty of food available. It just may be that your favourite/regular brands may not available. It's not life threatening. There are always alternatives.

I've just got home from my weekly shop at Sainsbury. The only item I found was short was Paracetamol, there were some but only a few. All shelves full. I always cook from scratch and plan meals for week, also shopping list accordingly. I was speaking to a lady at park the other day who was complaining that she couldn't get an item without going out of her way, I was shocked, not at that she couldn't get item but that if she bought certain basic products she could make it. People need to change the way they look at things and improvise.

I have had two deliveries this week with no missing items - one from Ocado and one from Sainsbury.

Given the horrific scenes in Kabul yesterday....first world problems??? The only thing I have struggled with getting lately has been Snickers ice cream bars - most likely because they are on a 50% offer at the moment. Really not happy with the insinuation that those of us who have not noticed any notable shortages are lying- or running around town to get photos of full shelves - who has the time for that? Getting fed up of the anti Brexit narrative - because of course everything that is wrong in the UK at the moment is somehow connected to Brexit The current shortage of lorry drivers has several causes and, quelle surprise, one of them is Brexit - along with Covid and a tendency in recent years for companies to not bother training their employees as there was a plentiful supply of minimum wage HGV drivers available from the EU. Oh yes - and the DVLA has a 1.4 million backlog of driving licences to issue, obviously not all are HGV but....you get the picture? Oh I almost forgot- Wilko toilet roll shelves were 80% empty, hoping not to see a repetition of the great loo roll hunt of 2020 but, given the stupidity of the type of person who stockpiles “just in case” (of what? a nuclear holocaust?)”, I would not rule it out.

But why should we have to Beanie? This is a self inflicted problem that most of the country didn't vote for. In the last 6 years I have not had a single bit of my life improved by Brexit. Everything has either become more complicated or more expensive - or just impossible.

Katie59

Yammy

Swedes are turnips in my part of the country as well the local word is snagger and across the border neeps. Animals eat swedes.
Maybe we will all end up making turnip jam as they did in the war.
Panic buying will only lead to more panic buying and yet more empty shelves like last year. Christmas might have to be cut back by everyone. Maybe a wartime recipe book should be released by someone. I still use a tea loaf recipe from then.

Swedes and Turnips are 2 different crops but there is a lot of confusion.
Swedes are dark blue with creamy yellow flesh are sold in most supermarkets, they will be harvested in winter usually before Christmas and stored until use, probably not many left now. North of the border “ Neeps and Tatties” is Swede and Potatoes.

Turnips are white fleshed, I’m sure you can eat them but I never have, they are widely grown for sheep feeding because they grow very quickly.

For animal feed almost all crops can be used, packhouse outgrades are usually fed to livestock, although increasingly anaerobic digestion to produce methane is being used.

Where I live in the North West turnips have always been yellow!!! Swedes are white and as I said fed to the animals.
I can remember before the advent of pumpkins we made Turnip lanterns at Halloween the vegetable was yellow. School dinners served turnip which was yellow.
Vegetables are given different names around the country. When living in the Northeast I asked for shallots which were meant for a salad I was passed a bag of bulb shallots and when I explained they told me I wanted scallions.
My friend from across the border calls the yellow-fleshed veg turnips like I do and always had yellow-fleshed turnips on Burns night. We might be calling the generic vegetable the wrong word but if you went into a shop you would get the wrong veg.

What I've noticed is that there are few actual gaps on the shelves but when I've looked more closely, the products have just been spread out more, and some are not what the tag at the front says they should be, so yes, definite shortages (we're in a city). Some things definitely not there but still plenty of other stuff. As others have said, we've become far too used to cheap food - at the expense of farmers & farm workers, lorry drivers, pickers, shop assistants, meat and fish processing plant workers, etc. (not to mention some very poor animal welfare practices). Brexit was always going to cause the main source of our cheap labour to disappear (whether in food, transport, retail, hospitality, care homes, NHS etc) and this is the fallout. Covid has only exacerbated the problem. I agree with Deedaa - I can't see any aspect of our lives that have been improved by Brexit, and it's only going to get worse for a long time. Maybe one day we'll be glad we came out - or maybe the clamour will start to rejoin. Only time will tell.

Germanshepherdsmum

From what posters are saying it varies from one area to another. Whilst I do miss my mushrooms when I can’t get them (must take a trip to Essex!) I don’t think they’re exactly suitable for stockpiling, though I do confess to having some homemade mushroom soup in the freezer. ?

I only like fresh mushrooms-I can't get on with frozen or tinned; although I've tried. I like the meaty "bite" of fresh ones. Have you thought of getting a kit and growing your own?

I did that once back in the 70s. Not worth the bother tbh. I don’t like tinned or frozen mushrooms either, they’re not the same at all, however other nutritious foods are available and we won’t starve!

Here in South Wales I have noticed some shelves are a bit empty looking. But I have put it down to the fact kids are off school and less people away on holiday. So more mouths for parents to feed daily. Let's see how things are once kids back at school.

Deedah. If most of the country did not vote for leaving the EU how comes we left

I’ve been to ASDA this morning to buy car mats ( !) - no shortage of anything there. All shelves fully stocked, and my Waitrose order for tonight is complete except for croissants.

I wish the media wouldn’t play it up so much - there’ll be panic buying of toilet rolls and flour very shortly!

Yes GillT57 you’re right there. My Mum was born 1919 and running a home in 1939 onwards, some seven years of it being alone, along with millions of other women during the Second World War. Everyone was in the same boat and necessity was truly the mother of invention whether it was food or clothing. The 2 oldest born ‘40 and ‘42 never took sugar in their tea. It was a case of not missing what you’ve never had. And bear in mind that rationing dragged on a long while - to the 1950s - my sister born then vividly remembers when sugar came off rationing and it was a sweeties jamboree! Bad news for teeth …anyhow what I’m getting at is just because they went through that and came out the other end albeit with slimmer waistlines and slightly fewer cavities does not mean they weren’t glad to see the back of it. And as I have mentioned on the other thread about Christmas shortages my parents flung themselves wholeheartedly in the direction of the shops for all the good stuff they could afford.

There have been shortages all year but not so noticeable if your shopping list is very much confined to locally-produced food. And of course this was all predicted as an outcome of Brexit but ignored in favour of 'making Britain great' again. Personally, I have experienced problems in certain types of cat food, and certain brands that are imported from even fairly close European countries. These things are not permanently unavailable but are less accessible and I have to wait and this leads to the temptation to buy extra in case the items are not available on the next order. I don't do this as a matter of fact but try something different. Unfortunately, I don't always find the 'local alternative' palatable. Brexit and Covid have taken their toll but neither one of these is going away so I guess it's a question of me making changes.

Great post Seatana. Let's hope we don't see the return of panic buying of anything, and if we do that the supermarkets start restricting those items that may run low or run out altogether.

I'll never forget that poor nurse, sobbing in her car as she'd come of duty and gone to buy in some food and there was virtually nothing left.

Never known so many whingers about Brexit. Best thing to happen for the last 50 years. All these whingers must have threesight, they certainly do not have foresight.

Just got back from Aldi, only thing unavailable was our usual brand of fresh orange juice (smooth) they had an alternative so got that.

Lots of tinned tomatoes (whole, chopped, with seasoning or without along with passata) mushrooms galore. Milk. cheese also lots of fresh anti-pasta products.

thats the best laugh i have had on this page for long while