UK could face food shortage without trade deal with EU
Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe has warned that Brexit could lead to a food shortage in there is no trade agreement with the European Union.
A no-deal scenario was inconceivable, Coupe told Bloomberg in an interview the morning ahead of Theresa May's major speech on Brexit on Friday afternoon.
“The impact of closing the borders for a few days to the free movement of food would result in a food crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen,” Coupe said.
Currently almost half the food eaten in the UK is imported. In 2016, the UK imported £22.4bn worth of food according to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The supermarket boss said that the introduction of a customs checkpoint would increase the cost of the imported food and reduce its freshness.
Not only imported foods would be affected by Brexit, these trade and immigration barriers would also damage British producers.
Wilkin & Sons of Tiptree, large UK exporters, are worried that with Brexit immigration rules they will not be able to hire their seasonal 330 Bulgarian and Romanian pickers, reported the Guardian last year. The food producers claim that they cannot find enough British workers interested in covering the job.
According to the British Summer Fruits Seasonal Labour Report released in June 2017, the consumption of UK fruit has shot over the last 20 years and without EU labour the country would be forced to import Dutch and Belgian berries. This would send the price soaring an estimated 50%.
May is due to give a speech on Friday to outline her vision for the UK’s future relationship with the EU. She has already shown her intent on leaving the single market and the customs union and according to transport secretary Chris Grayling she will use the speech to announce that the UK “can’t have everything”.