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A no-deal Brexit, we are increasingly, dauntingly aware, is becoming ever more likely by the day. Regardless of what happens on October 31, we as a nation still need to eat. The question is – what will we?

“We import about 40 per cent of all the food we eat in the UK,” says Chris Elliott, founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University, Belfast – up from around 25 per cent two decades ago. Around a third of all the food consumed in the UK comes from EU member states. “There’s an increasing dependency on other people growing food for the UK population.”


That dependency is worrying news for all of us in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Leaked government briefings indicate that in the first two weeks after Brexit there could be “potential consumer panic and food shortages” in all areas, not just at borders. “We can expect to see some shortages quite quickly,” says Tim Rycroft, chief operating officer for the Food and Drink Federation.

But what will we miss? “The thing that’s hard to say is what the shortages will be because that depends to some extent on which lorries get through and which don’t,” Rycroft explains. However, some of the more likely issues are obvious.

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Fresh fruit and vegetables

“Food supply chains are unbelievably complicated,” says Elliott. “If you mess about with one supply chain, you can see ramifications in many, many different areas.” One of those is likely to be fresh fruit and vegetables. Shortages in stock – 90 per cent of the salad leaves we eat in winter come from a single region of Spain, according to the British Leafy Salads Association – combined with price hikes due to scarcity will push up prices, affecting the poorer.

“One of the reasons October 31 is bad timing is that it’s right at the end of the British growing season,” says Rycroft. “It’s the moment at which we switch over to much greater dependence of imports.”


Yoghurt

A report commissioned by dairy giant Arla and published last year by the London School of Economics makes for sobering reading. In a press release accompanying the release of the report, the MD of the company that commissioned it said yoghurt could become an "occasional luxury."'

“The UK imports nearly all the yoghurt it eats,” says Elliott. “And a lot of yoghurt comes from mainland Europe, driven by prices.” As a result, supermarket shelves may become barer in the weeks after Brexit – and you could have to switch to dry cereal.

Milk

And we mean dry cereal: Elliott says the joke used to be that the British begrudgingly fed the Irish; now Ireland feeds the British. The Republic of Ireland produces nearly 10 billion litres of milk a year – the majority of which goes into the British market. But the Irish food production sector is worried about border checks and delays, and believes 50,000 jobs could be lost in the country.

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And don’t even think about cheese. “I find it hard to believe that a no-deal Brexit wouldn't impact our dairy supply in a pretty significant way,” says Nikhil Datta, co-author of the Arla/LSE research. “We'd most likely see price increases, reductions in supply and potentially some specialist imported cheeses disappearing off our shelves.”


Pasta and rice

Getting pasta and rice into the country could prove difficult: four in every five forkfuls of pasta come from Italy, where the warm weather and Mediterranean climate allow durum wheat to grow. Small-scale trials of growing durum wheat in the UK are just that: small-scale. And while we export a lot of seed potatoes, they’re exported to Europe – and stopping that happening to direct them to British consumers takes time. “There is scope for much more significant domestic production, but not quickly,” says Rycroft. “You can’t just magic up extra land, processing facilities and people to operate the factory.”

Pasta and rice aren't the only carbs to be potentially impacted. We imported more than £370 million worth of potatoes, most of it frozen, from the Netherlands and Belgium in the first six months of 2018.

Meat

“Meat is the second-biggest risk in terms of imports,” says Rycroft. “I think the biggest single item import from the EU is Irish beef,” he adds. “We’re clearly very reliant on that for a source of beef at the moment.” While the UK has said it will waive all restrictions and checks at the border to smooth any imports, a lack of Irish beef could have a mammoth impact. In the first nine months of 2018, 94 per cent of beef imports into the UK came from EU member states, and three-quarters of that came from Ireland alone.

Cakes

Cakes themselves won’t become scarce in the immediate aftermath of Brexit, but some of the crucial raw ingredients to make them will – which could have a knock-on effect on stock levels and prices. Most of the fresh eggs we eat in the UK are produced here, but we import vast numbers of powdered or liquid eggs that go into making cakes, pies and buns, many from eastern Europe. Post-Brexit, that could become harder.

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Chocolate

Bad news, chocoholics. We don’t grow cocoa beans in the UK – and we need cocoa beans to make chocolate (unless you’re a white chocolate fan, in which case you still need cocoa butter). In July Chris Chilton, an executive at Mondelez, the makers of Cadbury’s chocolate, posted a since-deleted Twitter thread warning that the just-in-time principles of food manufacturing mean there’d be chocolate shortages.

Most of the cocoa beans used by Mars, a major competitor, come from Cote d’Ivoire, and travels through the port of Rotterdam and via processing plants in the Netherlands and Germany before arriving in the UK. “If you’re trying to make a chocolate bar that has 12 ingredients, you’ve got to have all 12 ingredients at your factory on the day you make it,” says Rycroft. “If that one thing doesn’t get through, that can cause problems.”

Updated August 17, 2019 09:51BST: Arla's MD said yoghurt could become a luxury; not the LSE report the company comissioned

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