Labour shortages in the UK agri
The FSA expects long term shortages not just in agricultural workers, but also high skilled professions such as Abattoir workers, Butchers, Veterinarians and Meat Hygiene Inspectors (FSA, 2023) This lack of skilled labour, the FSA says, can results in risks to food safety.
"The Shropshire review" as a labour shortage thing?
UK pork crisis 2021-2022
Pig slaughterhouses suffered huge lack of staff because they were mostly foreign and returned home during the pandemic and then didn't come back for a while.
Factory farming is uniquely vulnerable to this, because they are high throughput systems that rely on constantly shipping animals off the slaughter in high numbers and getting new ones in. Unlike other parts of the food supply chain, farms cannot temporarily shut down or reduce hours, because animals need feeding every day. The first culling of healthy pigs occurred in early October. By mid-October 6,000 pigs had been culled and their bodies sent for disposal. Large pig farms may rear up to 800 pigs a week. There is a 10 month lead time in the production of a pig ready for processing, including 115 days of gestation, and six months of feeding and rearing in highly regulated environmental and welfare conditions. Pigs are typically slaughtered in an abattoir when they weigh about 120kg, at around five to six months of age. The majority of large abattoirs are designed to process pigs at this specific weight, and pigs that are heavier than that tend to have more fat, are harder to butcher, and are less suitable for domestic cooking, because, for example, roasting joint sizes become too large. Research by the National Farmers Union found that there are 500,000 job vacancies across the food and drink sector. Zoe Davies, Chief Executive of the National Pig Association, says the core problem is that British people do not want to work in abattoirs which, until recently, relied on 60-80% of their staff coming from Eastern Europe. Unlike beef or lamb, pig meat cannot be stored chilled for longer periods of time and so must be frozen.
DEFRA had to step in and use taxpayer money to hire freezer space.
horticulture
from UK governmental food security review, 2024
EU workers provided over 95% of the seasonal horticulture workforce
before EU Exit. Recruitment is now centred on central Asian nations through the
visa scheme. Fewer than 5% of seasonal workers in horticulture are UK nationals