One critical skill shortage we’ve not heard so much about is cocktail sausage wranglers… There’s been a lot of coverage about doctors and nurses, but the impact of fewer European meat processing workers in the UK had been ignored.
According to this article “the meat industry is trying to juggle” so perhaps it’s not surprising that wrapping individual sausages in bacon rashers is proving tricky. And according to YouGov, the absence of pigs in blankets would be “a disaster” for 61% of British people (that’s right, “a disaster”).
The working environment is making it hard to attract workers, apparently – cold, in remote rural areas and full of dead animals. The chap from the Meat Processing Association didn’t actually mention that last bit – presumably some candidates might be put off. The Guardian coverage of this issue refers to glazed hams but I can’t find any details about a shortage of ham glazers.
There have been a string of contradictory food related stories recently – UK storage facilities would be absolutely full of nothing but seasonal food by November, so no-deal would mean Xmas literally coming early; The Caterer was warning about a shortage of turkeys (rather than “one turkey too many” as I recall we were being told in 2016); and then turkeys being given the vote for Christmas, or something like that. Hopefully everything will become clearer in December.
