‘Immediate national priority’: ministers accused of complacency over UK food supply | Food & drink industry

Ministers have been accused of being complacent about the risks to vital food supplies to the UK amid concerns about fuel shortages, cyber attacks and extreme weather.

The cold storage and logistics trade body has called on the government to make potential disruption to the UK’s food system an “urgent national priority”.

Phil Pluck, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation (CCF), which represents businesses involved in the supply and transport of temperature-sensitive food and medicine, said: “The potential for a major food crisis is now greater than ever. We are now at the mercy of so many different factors that are becoming increasingly dangerous to the supply of food in this country.”

Tom Southall, deputy chairman of the CCF, said Britain’s food system had not been significantly tested since the second world war, when around half of the country’s cold storage was publicly owned. “This points to a complacency in the UK about how and where we store our food.”

Britain depends on overseas imports for more than a third of its food; Most food enters through four ports, making supplies particularly vulnerable to potential disruptions.

CCF said international conflicts or blockages at the UK border could halt the flow of food into the country, while fuel shortages or the failure of cold storage due to flooding or extreme heat during the climate crisis could cause gaps on supermarket shelves.

The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the global flow of fertilizer needed for half the world’s food production and further raised fears of famine.

Many daily grocery items, including meat, vegetables, fish, dairy products, bread, fruit and ready meals, as well as medicines, vaccines, blood and plasma products, are connected to the cold chain.

These products are chilled or frozen before being transported by approximately 100,000 trucks through 460 cold storage sites on their journey from growers and manufacturers to food retailers, hospitality venues and public institutions such as schools, hospitals and care homes.

CCF accused the government of failing to take steps to make the UK’s food supply more resilient. “We are recognized as critical national infrastructure by Russian cybercriminals, not by the UK government,” Pluck said, warning that companies in the cold chain have faced frequent cyberattack attempts in recent months.

Food supplies have been disrupted several times over the past few years, including shortages of fresh produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers after bad weather in Europe and North Africa hit imports in February 2023. At the same time, greenhouses in the UK and the Netherlands have cut production due to rising energy bills. Many supermarkets in the UK have responded by temporarily rationing the sale of certain products.

Pluck called on the government to designate the UK’s cold storage and food transport hubs as critical infrastructure, rather than the food sector as a whole, given recent supply shocks during the pandemic or after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This will ensure that power supplies are protected in the event of major outages.

He warned that disruptions in food supplies could quickly lead to riots, as seen in Venezuela in 2016, with vulnerable people and the poorest households being those most exposed to such risks.

CCF has produced a white paper calling for staff in the UK’s major cold storage and transport hubs to be given permanent essential worker status, which they have had temporarily during the pandemic, and for the Cabinet Office to take overall responsibility for cold chain resilience and security.

A government spokesman said: “The food sector is one of the UK’s 13 critical national infrastructure sectors and the cold chain is important to food supply in improving the ability to adapt to disruptions that may occur.

“We are committed to sustaining domestic food production, investing billions of dollars in the development of new technologies to increase yields, develop climate-resilient crops and help farmers produce more food.”