The UK may have to cull 70,000 healthy pigs early because of a labor shortage. And that cut could be felt by customers during the holiday season. /CFP/
First chicken from Nando's, then milkshakes from McDonald's and now thousands of pigs may be about to be culled early... The labor shortage in the UK is causing restaurants and supermarkets to go without and prompting a debate about the country's post-Brexit immigration system.
A combination of COVID-19 and an exodus of EU workers from the UK after Brexit is causing critical labor shortages along the country's food supply chain.
There is a shortage of around 100,000 truck drivers in the UK, according to the managing director of the supermarket chain Iceland, Richard Walker.
"The reason for sounding the alarm now is that we've already had one Christmas cancelled at the last minute," Walker told the BBC. "I'd hate this one to be problematic as well."
According to Walker, his company has already had to cancel up to 40 deliveries a day.
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McDonald's, the fast-food restaurant chain, had to pull milkshakes and bottled water from its menu. And the chicken restaurant business Nando's had to close 50 of its eateries because it did not have enough meat.
Another fast-food group, KFC, has also had to remove some of the items from its menu.
An estimated 25,000 drivers with EU citizenship left the UK last year because of Brexit and COVID-19 increased that labor crisis, according to Jonathan Portes, an economics professor at King's College London.
"The immediate cause of general disruptions to supply is the ongoing impacts of the pandemic," he told AFP.
"It is hardly surprising that closing down very large sectors of the economy and requiring millions of people not to work, and then reopening those sectors – not once but several times – would cause disruption to supply chains and mismatches in the labor market. This is true across Europe."
McDonald's had to cut milkshakes from its 1,250 stores in the UK. /AP/ Alastair Grant
The latest group to feel the consequences of this labor shortage is the pig sector.
The UK's National Pig Association [NPA] claimed on August 28 there is an estimated 70,000 pig backlog in the country, and 15,000 pigs are being added to it every week, potentially forcing farmers to cull many of them early.
The backlog is caused by labor shortages in processing plants, according to Zoe Davies, the CEO of the NPA. A statement from the NPA claimed that there was a labor shortage of around 25 percent in processing plants.
In response to this shortage, many industry groups have proposed changes to the UK's immigration system so that workers could come to the country on a one-year visa.
Those groups include the National Farmers' Union, the National Pharmacy Association, the Food and Drink Federation, Dairy UK, the British Frozen Food Federation and the British Meat Processors Association.
Since January 1, new EU workers not on the UK's settlement scheme have had to apply for a work visa to come to the UK, usually reserved for high-paying jobs.
But on Saturday, the UK government rejected this request. "We want to see employers make long-term investments in the UK domestic workforce instead of relying on labor from abroad," a government spokesperson said.
Despite this, a business lobby group, the Institute of Directors, joined the growing list of industry groups to ask for this change, according to The Guardian newspaper.
It reported that Roger Barker, the Institute of Directors' director of policy, said investing in UK workers would not meet the immediate demand for staff and that a more flexible visa scheme was still required.