to think "everyone will have the food they need" is a way of saying that food choice will be limited

[chomalungma]

It's what Gove said this morning when asked about food after Brexit.

"Everyone will have the food they need"

I am sure that's true....and who needs a wide choice of food anyway.

Can the NHS afford the WTO tariffs though?

Hobson's choice, isn't it.

What is the tariff level? (Will google, but expect posters here have that info at their fingertips)

Phew, at least we'll be able to fry all the potatoes.

There's another thread talking about summer holiday inequality and fsm...school meal standards (and care homes and nurseries) are likely to also go down.

TheQueef 4p ramen?! I could live on ramen... Link please?

Can I ask why you have singled me out as exempt from harm? What special qualities do you believe I possess?

If you think that food shortages won't cause any harm then you're not in any of the categories that people have identified in this thread who will struggle. You also don't have much imagination.

@KUGA what do you mean by this well they act like vegetables anyway. ??

Found this:

iea.org.uk/brexit-and-pharmaceuticals-separating-fear-from-reality-2/

There are generally no tariffs on medicines and some medico-devices between developed countries. The hurdles are continuing the licencing, and getting meds out of queues of other shipments. Presumably the military could help with the latter? And we'd have to set something that allowed all permitted suppliers to continue to supply (we can, it seems do this unilaterally, but bilateral would be better as foreign countries will still want to buy what is nanufactured here) for a grace period.

Phew!

(unless there are gross errors in that, should it be back to food now? - the one point from that which is relevant to food is that it does appear to postulate a means to prioritise queues based on the nature of the shipment. That, if correct, will help food supply considerably),

Not worried about Hunan food, we will cope.

Have to confess I ordered a 4 month supply of dog food rather than the usual month yesterday as it is made in the Netherlands

I think you may struggle if you can't cook or have no imagination.

Or if you have no money for fuel or the power is out .

Or are a family in a bedsit with no cooker......

Need or want , they are not the same!

Yes, the generation that lived through rationing is considerably healthier than ones born later - it's not for nothing that you occasionally see commentaries about how the subsequent generation will not live as long as their baby boomer parents

The generation that lived through rationing (which actually lasted until 1954 - 9 years after the end of the war) suffered from very poor health. They had rickets from lack of vitamin D and lacked vitamin C in their diets.

Their children, the 1950s baby-boomers, enjoyed a better diet and vastly improved health as more and better food became available, but money was still tight, so excessive consumption was rare. Cars were still uncommon so people walked or cycled and leisure time meant playing outside so their physical lifestyle was better too. They are the ones who are in their 60s now and will be living for another 20 years.

Their children are the ones who grew up in the 80s and 90s when takeaways, fatty foods and processed foods started to become the norm. When the TV went on at 7am and didn't get switched off until midnight. When people stopped volunteering to run sports clubs and brownies as 24/7 replaced 9-5 and people no longer had the time or inclination to contribute.

And in turn their children are the ones who really are beginning to show signs of very poor health, so much so that their life expectancy is predicted to be lower than that of their parents or grandparents. Sedentary lifestyle, no PE or sports clubs out of school, mums taxi on call 24/7, kids being driven 200 yards to school instead of walking. Parents choosing convenience over nutritional value when buying food.

I need dark chocolate. And German ham and feta and halloumi

Will it be left as random as processing shipments in the order they joined the queue?

I suppose it depends, @AuntieStella. It’s not unthinkable that major companies might pay more (whether over or under the table) to skip the queue. But honestly I’ve no idea. I’m not a total naïf though.

Occasionally on these threads someone will pipe up to say “Oh the European companies want to sell us their goods, of course they’re not going to refuse to sell to us.” That’s absolutely true, they’re desperate to sell to us (I work very very tangentially in logistics in this area), but they’re getting fucked over in this just like everyone else except certain politicians and disaster capitalists.

British salt produces loads of salt too - so milk, meat, oil, salt, sugar from beets...

Fuel though - Britain produces about half as much as it uses, and most of the rest comes from or via Europe...

So get ahead and order/ collect your firewood now! That may be the smart thing to stockpile...

I suppose, to be fair, not everyone has the food they want now so it would be difficult to say 'want'. Plenty of peole make food choices based on cost or cooking/storage ability already . But i am suspicious thats not the reason he said 'need'

Wartime spirit is especially strong when you discover that 52% of the people sharing your shelter voted to be bombed.

@daisydoooo I think we all know that there would be some kind of complicated app (Android only???) or card system which would cost a bomb and make £££ for some Tory crony’s company while being completely inefficient and possibly even ineffective

Never mind, everyone. Sovereignty, eh?

Think this is the likeliest. Not actual shortages, just much less choice.

Initially yes. Then we will back to pretty much the same choice as now BUT more expensive.

So that’s my prediction. 6 months of many of our usual foods not being available. Shortages will begin by B+2 and ramp up sharply over the first month to peak over the Christmas season, then recover slowly over 2020 as the new supply chain logistics are established under WTO tariffs.

People will panic buy in this period as they start to see empty shop shelves, and this will be exacerbated by scare stories in media. Notably, the pro-Brexit tabloids who have been talking down the risk to food supplies before B-day will join in, because once Brexit has happened they don’t need to protect it so will go back to their usual behaviour of inflaming the current fear du jour.

Within a year you will be able to buy most foods easily as long as you have the money, but for most people the price hike will be enough to move some things that are currently everyday into the occasional treats bracket and at the lower income levels a lot more people will slip into permanent food poverty.

Yay for Brexit

"Everyone will have the food they need"

Does Gove mean that there will be sufficient food for everyone in the supermarkets, or does he mean that everyone will be joining the millions of people who already depend on food banks?

Does he really mean 'there will be food for everyone, and your ration book will be arriving in the post next Friday (as long as those bloody remoaners, lefties, EU collaborators and saboteurs, snowflakes, Marxists and general enemies of the people don't boot us out of Parliament on Tuesday)?'

100% there will be panic buying.

@LisaSimpsonsbff I had a two month old at the end of the March and had been so worried about formula. He's now seven months and I'm trying to put a lid on the breastfeeding as he's having both and I'm going to back to work soon - but part of me is thinking I should carry on just in case I can't get formula. At least he'll be nine months old so not totally reliant on it but it's bloody scary (and we shouldn't have to be worrying about any of this as we are DOING IT TO OURSELVES.)

On the bright side no other sodding diet is working for me so the Brexit diet might be the one that does the trick 🙄

I can't believe we are discussing a government minister admitting, albeit without actually saying it, that they are knowingly taking us into a situation in which life is going to get demonstrably worse for the majority of people, and some people on here are looking for the positives and trying to claim it's a good thing really. That rationing was/will be a good thing???!! FFS...

and also this post war crap.do you know how many malnourished people there were.starving kids.unhappy people literally digging to get by.is this post war crap once again speaking only like Gove of being ok because they wre the people with money?and it appears the same now.we hear those with money will be ok.but those already struggling will be in serious shit.
small waist ,oooo yes we will all have one again.oh do fuck off.
there is so much more to weight now too.mental and emotinal heath comes into the obesity stuff way more now than it did before.the pressures and the coping of people to do with weight nd food is so different and so much more in depth than it eever was.this is only going to make that worse.

In the event of No Deal no they can't. We won't have any trade agreements in place to be able to get the medicine in the first place

The issue with medicines is not trade deals, it's transport delays leading to shortages. It's very unlikely that we won't be sold medicines. But if everything takes longer to arrive but is issued out at the sale rate to patients you eventually run short waiting on deliveries.

With most tablet medications delays won't adversely affect the product. But with medications that require specialist transportation, e.g. chilled or refrigerated there could be issues.

Delays are themselves an issue to some specialist treatments and diagnostic tools. For example, Technetium-99m is a radioisotope tracer used in a lot of diagnostic procedures. It has a half life of about 66 hours - or three days delay and it's half as useful as it was. Now we don't make this isotope in the UK, we don't have the right type of research reactor. We currently have a deal as part of Euratom to ensure supply. We can't stock pile it in advance, because it's decaying as soon as it leaves the reactor.

Now it's very unlikely that we won't be able to buy Technetium-99m from Euratom, but we'll be an external customer. The declining value of the pound makes it more expensive. If we have to fly it in (as happened after the Channel Tunnel fire and during strikes in the channel ports) it will increase the cost further. Increased costs lead to NHS rationing of diagnostic investigations.

Euratom is one of many arrangements that Leavers have voted to reject.