UK shortages egged on by several crises

From avian flu, to rising energy costs and labor shortages, Britain's agricultural sector is facing a bleak 2023. However, there may be lessons to learn from China, Xing Yi reports in London.

Since mid-November, grocery shoppers in London have noticed something weird in the local supermarket chains Tesco and Lidl: People can't always find eggs on the shelves. Where normally boxes of different kinds of eggs used to be, instead, they find notices that read: "We are limiting these products to three per customer, so that everyone can get what they need."

In some other supermarket chains, such as Asda, the quota for egg purchases per person has been set at two boxes. And according to the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, the rationing will last beyond Christmas.

The direct cause of the egg supply shortage is a widespread bird flu pandemic that has been raging since last year, and which hit the United Kingdom the worst. The association said that bird flu-related culls had claimed 750,000 laying hens since Oct 1 alone, compared with 1.8 million over the whole of last year.

Could the avian flu become the last straw to a slow-burn food supply crisis in the UK, aggravated by the cost-of-living crisis, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and a post-Brexit shortage of labor? The answer remains to be seen, but the affected farmers and consumers are the ones currently suffering.

Besides egg rationing, the price of turkeys has also gone up: Among 27 like-for-like products of Christmas birds available last year and now, all but one had seen a price rise of at least 12 percent. The average price increase was 24.4 percent across this group, according to a report based on data from supermarket analysts Assosia.

The biggest jump was a 45.3 percent increase in the price of a Morrisons British large whole turkey to £31.44 ($37,92), and even the price of frozen turkeys rose by around 18.1 percent, it showed.

Half of the 1.2 million free-range turkeys and geese reared for Christmas in the UK have been killed or culled because of the bird flu, according to Richard Griffith, chief executive of British Poultry Council.

"This year is the worst bird flu that we've ever seen. Around 36 percent of poultry farms in the country are covered by some form of control," he told a Parliamentary hearing of the environment, food and rural affairs committee on Nov 29. "The on-costs for industry and food production are potentially enormous."

A report published by the House of Lords Library in November said that the UK has experienced its largest outbreak of bird flu, an outbreak that led to the death of 97 million birds globally and 3.8 million in the country, with significant consequences for agriculture.

"Experts have warned that infections could rise even higher over the winter of 2022-23," said the report, adding that the UK government has imposed mandatory housing for all poultry, amended its culling compensation scheme and relaxed the sale regulations of defrosted poultry.

But the compensation for farmers was deemed "unfair", as payment is only made for healthy birds that are culled by government vets. Because the current strain of bird flu kills birds so quickly, a large number of them die between notification of infection by farmers and the arrival of the vets for culling.

Paul Kelly, a poultry farmer at Kelly Turkeys, said: "The current compensation scheme dates back to 1981, that's when avian influenza was 'low pathogenic' and it didn't kill the birds, but the problem now is that it turned into 'high pathogenic' and the infected turkeys die within four days."

Three of Kelly's poultry farms have been hit by the bird flu this year. "In one farm with 9,500 turkeys, the first infection was on Thursday evening, with 20 mortalities. By Monday lunchtime, they were all dead," he said. "It's devastating."

Robert Goodwill, chair of Parliament's environment, food and rural affairs committee, wrote a letter to the Cabinet in November, asking for a revision of the compensation rule, as "this can have a particular impact on smaller producers who keep birds in a single location and can lose their entire flock during an outbreak.

"If the sector is not able to restock, the supply issues we are seeing will continue to get worse, making the UK more reliant on imports and undermining our food security," wrote Goodwill.