UK food shortages 'alarmingly likely' next year, University of Belfast warns - malnutrition cases tripled in 10 years

Madeleine Ross
Telegraph
Fri, 22 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC

Food shortages are "alarmingly likely" in 2024 as climate change, transportation issues and global conflicts continue to affect supplies, a food security expert has said.

New checks will also be introduced on goods coming into the UK from the EU at the end of January, under the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), further impacting food imports.

Professor Chris Elliott, of Queen's University Belfast, said that fruit and vegetables would be particularly affected. It follows shortages of eggs and oil throughout 2023, with supermarkets forced to ration tomatoes and cucumbers due to poor weather in southern Europe in February.

Prof Elliott, who chaired the government inquiry into the 2013 horsemeat scandal said: "My expectation is, as we've already seen in 2023 with some empty supermarket shelves for months, this will become more persistent as we go forward."

He added: "It'll be about affordability but also availability, and the likelihood of empty shelves, particularly fresh produce shelves, in 2024 is alarmingly high."

The food security expert said the potential shortages were caused by food insecurity in other countries, climate change and transportation issues. He also criticised the Government for a lack of a long-term plan and said the UK's agricultural industry has collapsed.

Comment: The establishment's attack on egg producers was at least done covertly, whilst the efforts to intentionally destroy farming were brazen:

• Huge fire at farm kills 50,000 hens, exacerbating New Zealand's egg shortage
• Irish farmers revolt over gov'ts 'green' plan to cull 195,000 cattle, 'retirement scheme' offered to willing farmers

Professor Elliott pointed to Singapore, which has introduced plans to grow up to 30pc of its own food by 2030, having relied almost exclusively on imports, as a good example for the UK to follow.

He said: "We are virtually totally dependent on other countries for most of our fresh produce, our fruit and our vegetables. We were reasonably self-sufficient in dairy, we were reasonably self-sufficient in poultry and eggs.

"But that's also on the decline now as a result of the collapse of the food industry or sectors of the food industry in the UK."

A 2021 food security report found that 46pc of food consumed in the UK in 2020 was imported.

Eggs, dairy, meat and other "high-risk" items will all be subject to more health checks at the border from January 31, which could slow the supply of food into the UK, the Institute of Export and International Trade warned.

Comment: It seems 'high-risk' items are the healthiest; which means processed, unhealthy foods will be least affected.

What are the chances that these extensive checks - that weren't necessary before, and don't appear to be necessary now - will result, not just in delays, but viable food being dumped for the most inane reasons? Whether that be excessively stringent health and safety, or simply a lack of staff - and at a time when people are going hungry? 750,000 birds culled in just 30 days after bird flu detected in 26 US states, 72 MILLION culled since 2022

Marco Forgione, of the Institute of Export & International Trade, said: "Whilst businesses in the UK are already getting used to checks on products going into the EU, the checks BTOM will introduce for EU goods coming the other way will be new."

He said: "These new procedures will take some bedding in time, so there's a risk we'll see disruption to supplies of our favourite drinks and other food - which could lead to gaps in supermarket shelves."

Comment: It seems that Brexit bureaucracy will be used as a way to deflect from the very real shortages much of the planet is facing.

British retailers also face shipping chaos in the Panama and Suez canals, which continues to threaten supplies of consumer goods including wine and iPhones.

Comment: A seemingly perfect storm of Earth Changes and Western chaos creation.

Two of the world's biggest shipping companies confirmed on Friday that they would stop sending vessels through the Red Sea as a result of rising tensions in the Middle East, while BP said it would stop sending oil through the region on Monday.

AP Moller-Maersk and Maersk Tankers will avoid the trade route, meaning goods coming from Asia, including electronics, clothing and furnishings, may take weeks longer to arrive.

The National Farmers' Union horticulture and potatoes board chair Martin Emmet has called for targets on British food production.

NFU President Minette Batters said: "We are asking for targets for British food production, just as the Government has rightly legislated for targets on the environment, green energy and climate change. Food has to be given the same status."

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman said they did not recognise the claims and that the UK's food chain is well equipped to deal with disruption.

The spokesman continued: "We produce 60pc of all the food we need here in the UK - figures which have changed little over the last 20 years - and our farming reforms are designed to back British farmers and maintain domestic food production."

In relation to the concerns around the Border Trade Operating Model, the spokesman said disruption was not expected and that beer, wine and spirits would not be affected either by the new checks or by shipping disruptions.

"We remain committed to implementing the full controls set out in the Border Target Operating Model, which will reduce the burden on businesses and protect our food supply chains."

Comment: The Guardian reports:

Surge in number of people in hospital with nutrient deficiencies, NHS figures show

More than 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies last year, a threefold increase on 10 years ago, according to NHS figures that have prompted warnings about the devastating health impact of food insecurity.

Hospital data for England and Wales, obtained by the Guardian, reveals a startling rise in diagnoses linked to poor diet in the past decade, with nearly half a million admissions of patients with iron deficiencies, hundreds of thousands suffering from vitamin deficiencies and more than 10,000 cases of malnutrition last year.
Senior doctors said the trend mirrored their clinical experiences, with a growing number of patients whose health problems are rooted in poverty.

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), said doctors were facing "moral distress" because of a limited ability to help. "It's not like you can prescribe money or food," she said.

"As a nation we shouldn't be having malnourished children. We shouldn't be having children with rickets. We should not be having people with iron deficiencies or low folic acid," Hawthorne added. "There's that sense of this isn't right; what's happening here?"

RCGP is calling for an expansion of free school meals and for stronger policies to improve the affordability of healthy food in supermarkets. Hawthorne said: "I have a reluctance to giving people supplements in a rich country, where they should be able to afford food. It's so counterintuitive."

She added: "There are definitely cases we hear about of parents going without meals so their children can eat. We're hearing of a lot of people going to food banks who would never have dreamt of going to a food bank before."

The Guardian analysed rates of 25 conditions linked to poor nutrition, including vitamin and mineral deficiencies, scurvy, rickets and malnutrition. Over the past decade, there was a steep increase across nearly all of the conditions, based on primary and secondary diagnosis in hospital patients in England and Wales.

Admissions with a diagnosis of iron deficiency more than doubled from 196,685 in 2013-14 to 490,005 in 2022-23, including thousands of child admissions last year. Cases of patients being treated for vitamin B deficiencies (B12, folate and other B vitamins) tripled from 57,406 a decade ago to 167,562 last year. Protein energy malnutrition, caused by insufficient calories or protein, rose from 5,746 to 9,390 cases. In total, there were 824,519 admissions with a diagnosis of at least one of these conditions in 2022-23, up from 293,686 a decade ago.

Prof Sir Michael Marmot, of UCL, who led a landmark review into health inequalities, said that the figures, if representative of an underlying increase in illness, were "really shocking".

"The sceptic in me always asks: is this real, or increased recognition of the problem?" he said. "But that massive increase - wow. It seems likely that there's got to be a real component."

The hospital data does not account for the possibility of increased testing. And experts said this may explain increases in rarer deficiencies, such as vitamin A and thiamine, which are typically monitored in the growing population of bariatric surgery patients. However, experts said that these explanations, and the increase in people following meat and dairy-free diets, were unlikely to fully explain such substantial increases in iron and B vitamin deficiencies.

Rebecca McManamon, a consultant dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said testing for iron deficiency was very common. "It's a first-line test in A&E for anyone presenting with fatigue or breathlessness. Most GPs would be requesting these tests on a daily basis. It's fair to say there is more awareness, but not enough to explain this increase."

The trend also tracks a stark increase in food insecurity over the same period, with 5.9% of adults reporting not eating for a whole day because they could not afford or access food, 15% of adults reporting skipping meals and 21% of households with children experiencing food insecurity, according to a recent Food Foundation survey.

"As a clinician I'm not surprised," said McManamon. "I see people that have very limited diets. We all know the increasing use of food banks. Food access and food insecurity is a huge thing."

The link between hunger, food insecurity and health is complex, with some people simultaneously being overweight or obese and suffering deficiencies because of diets that are high calorie but lacking in essential nutrients.

Prof Monica Lakhanpaul, a consultant paediatrician at Whittington health NHS trust, said she was encountering more children with iron and vitamin deficiencies and rickets, caused by a lack of vitamin D and calcium, describing the problem as a "hidden crisis".

While there has been a focus on reversing these deficiencies in low- and middle-income countries, she said, children in the UK were increasingly at risk. "We don't screen for it, we actually don't know the scale of the problem on a population basis. That's my worry," she said. "What's on our doorstep we forget about very quickly. We need to know as a nation that people's health in this country is deteriorating."

Nutritional deficiencies are particularly concerning in children, with iron and B12 being critical for brain development; calcium and vitamin D (from sun exposure and dietary intake) are crucial for bone development. "They're going to have health problems further down the line, like brittle bones when they're older," said Lakhanpaul. "We're storing up health problems for later in life."