It’s not that the UK government isn’t doing anything, but there are some bottlenecks that can’t be resolved that quickly. Because there are too few butchers in the UK 800 work visas were awarded in Octoberbut pigs are still being disposed of because they cannot be slaughtered. To end the misery, British meat producers have now started to export carcasses, i.e. slaughtered animals, to the EU. There these are then processed and packaged before they come back to the UK.
It may sound absurd, but otherwise the meat processing industry in the kingdom can no longer help itself. Their association boss recently said the Financial Timesthat meat will be transported from Great Britain to Ireland and soon also to the Netherlands. He estimates a million British pigs will be processed this way.
The butcher shortage is one of many shortcomings the UK is currently experiencing. Shortage is the word of the hour, in German: bottleneck. There are quite a few bottlenecks in the UK in many different areas of everyday life, some of which are more noticeable, others less. Brexit? Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government claim that it has nothing to do with it.
But how do you explain the bottleneck among butchers? According to the British Meat Processors Association, there are between 10,000 and 12,000 butchers short in the UK. There are two main reasons given in the industry: Brexit and Corona. Around 200,000 EU citizens left the UK last year alone, many of them from Eastern Europe. After Brexit, it has become much more difficult for them to work in the UK.
If you want to do that as an EU citizen, you now need a visa. However, the process is complicated and time-consuming, so most overseas butchers may not be able to start working before the end of November. It is also unclear how many butchers want to come to the UK at all, because the visas are limited to six months. Then the butchers should go back to their homeland.
From the industry’s point of view, this is not a long-term solution. And so exporting carcasses to Ireland is just the beginning, even if it costs a lot of money. According to the Association of the Meat Processing Industry, the additional cost per truck load is 1,500 pounds (the equivalent of around 1,750 euros). This includes the transport and the fees for the Brexit-related controls at the EU border.
So far, British meat has only been checked when it is exported to the European Union. There are no extensive checks when re-entering the UK, at least not yet. British customs officials are not due to closely monitor imports from the EU until January. It is quite possible that it will then take longer for British steaks to end up in British supermarkets.