To be surprised that some friends are buying extra food because of Brexit?

[abacucat]

I suspect that specific foods may get be in short supply for a short period of time, but there will still be plenty of food in the shops. It is not going to be Armageddon. So this seemed an over reaction to me. Or am I going to be that person in the disaster movie who is laughing saying everyone is over reacting, who ends up dead when the disaster finally hits?

Fresh food ..... I know of several new metal box fridge warehouses that have gone up

one of Tesco's largest DCs is in Reading, on a 58 acre site. It has 900,000 sq ft or storage, and supplies stores in the region on a next day basis.
How would you think Tesco (& all the other retails) be able to build sufficient space to hold stock to provide the the same stores on a next week basis in the next 75 days? A few small metal box fridge warehouses wouldn't even cover the next hours requirments.

Marion @pickledpuffin
2016- "Food will be plentiful & much cheaper"

2017 - "There won't be any shortages"

2018 - "We will have adequate food"

2019- "You might have to fight the bouncer at your local ASDA"

Waitrose sales are down.

Will a good sales pitch later this year be 'we have more security guards than anyone else'

I think I might buy up some cases of gin and relabel it BlitzSpirit. I’m in a Leave area, I’m sure there’d be a huge market for it.

I bought 5 massive boxes of my favourite teabags yesterday on the back of this thread.

I googled brexit food, and found this from foodresearch.co.uk -

"The briefing recommends that Local Authorities:
• Create Food Resilience Teams
• Anticipate and reduce the impact of Food Brexit, particularly on SMEs
• Narrow the information gap and treat the public openly and fairly
• Prepare for public engagement
• Be a local food voice so that central government knows the local realities."

Do we get to eat the "food resilience team"?

@cushioncovers , while I can't deny getting into a bicker - people who think No Deal is a reasonable option but get het up about WA is something that gets me " bickery ". However, I have been on MN regularly giving people practical advice on getting a buffer of food in at home . What practical things have you been doing to help other people?

I said this on another thread, but I'll say it here too. I work for the civil service in a department that has nothing to do with Brexit. Last week, the whole department was asked to consider moving to new jobs to support a no deal Brexit scenario, specifically to ensure smooth movement of food medicines and people. They were looking for many hundreds of people to volunteer ASAP. Didn't matter what our current role was, this was much more urgent. They were pretty much begging us - your country needs you etc. So basically, the government doesn't have it under control at all. There is clearly a huge amount to do in a very short time scale. I will be seriously stockpiling over the next few weeks.

What practical things have you been doing to help other people?

Um minding my own business. Getting on with life, not panicking and buying up all the food. Not assuming others are stupid.

Easy now DudesMummy, I think posters on this thread may be as close to a "food resilience team" as it gets, lol!

"ralfeesmum - Well.....let's all look back to December 31,1999 when the pessimists were busy, busy, busy forecasting that on the dot of midnight the Millennium Bug would fell all the computers on the planet and civilisation would vanish in a nano-second. Not.A.Thing.Happened"

^This made me laugh out loud!! . Thanks for that, @ralfeesmum

The sad thing is, though, that some younger people (too young to remember Y2k and all the thousands of hours of work that took place in order to make systems compliant) actually do believe that the concerns over the millennium bug were unfounded!

Hop on the Eurostar?! You're assuming in the event of a no-deal Brexit that the train drivers will even be licensed to drive the trains into/out of the UK...

Neolara that is scary! I work for a large NHS Trust and no-one has yet told us anything about Brexit prepping, which is a bit worrying too. Regarding the whole "the millenium bug didn't happen" thing, we were prepping for that in our Trust more than a year ahead, dedicated IT teams working on it, contingency plans were circulated etc. And now,, with Brexit...no-one has even told me how my patients will get their (very expensive, originating from the EU) medication if things go tits up...or even if anyone has any plans around this.

Clearly they are keeping us in the dark to avoid panic but actually behind the scenes have everything completely under control, just like the government are doing....oh, wait...

@Neolara I know you won't want to disclose what part of the civil service you work for but if the whole of your team moves to help with Brexit who does your job and could that have significant impact on the public if there is staff shortages in your line of work?

not panicking and buying up all the food.

Shops can still restock, now. If there's a No Deal and people panic buy at the last minute it will be a different kettle of fish. However, I doubt that anyone here cares what anyone else is doing - we'll all either prepare or not, according to our temperaments.

DP has just confirmed that his branch of the civil service have also been asked to volunteer in large numbers to deal with anticipated major problems in the event of a no deal Brexit @neolara.
And yes that would mean they weren’t doing their usual (and very essential) work.

not panicking and buying up all the food.

Thank goodness we have a real expert on supply chains here to explain this to us! As I'm sure cushion will verify, every single item for purchase in the British Isles was brought here in 1987, and no more items will ever enter these isles again. There is a big counter in a warehouse somewhere, counting down the number of items available to buy.

Therefore, if a MNer purchases one extra tin of tomatoes today in January she will literally cause there to be one less tin of tomatoes available for purchase in March.

Sorry.

Shops can still restock now. And the nearer it gets to Brexit Day, particularly if we no deal, the harder it will be to guarantee a full restock. Because of boring things like supply chains and imports and snarled up roads.
Curious that some think that doing a slow increase in your home pantry now is worse than not thinking about it and then panicking in the run up to Brexit Day. And if you find your pantry is full of stuff you don't need you either give it to a food bank or slowly run it down at home saving money. Still can't see why that's a bad thing but I'm sure some No Deal supporter will tell me.

Still can't see why that's a bad thing but I'm sure some No Deal supporter will tell me.

We've had a whole bunch of contradictory reasons on this thread, including "if you buy an extra tin now, you will cause shortages in two months' time," "there won't be shortages because those dastardly foreigners need us to buy their stuff, more than we need them" and "there will be shortages, but shortages are aces and skills because I have a fetish about hurting people."

I think the bottom line is that stockpiling, however gradually and calmly done, is by definition reflective of a negative outlook towards the Great Day of Freeeeeeedom. And as we all know, every time somebody has a negative outlook towards the Great Day, a Brexit fairy dies (or, considering Seaborne Freight, a Brexit ferry dies).

Song

How will the lorries pass through the ports at the same speed as they do now, if Brexit happens without a deal?

At least with all of these bouncers at the doors and food queue organisers unemployment should be low.

Not if they’re using the civil servants and the army to do it.