Is tesco rationing???

[Santaslittlemelter]

I'm trying to do the online shop here and not only is stock a bit shit, like no dishwasher salt, no pork mince, no organic cucumber, no most types of tomato, but I have noticed that a load of the things in my basket say I have reached my maximum quantity. So I am allowed one red pepper, one pack of two small salmon fillets, one pack of tomatoes, one cucumber.....I have a family of 6.

I haven't heard much recently on supply issues. But is anyone else finding this happening? Its a bit shit for a huge retailer.

@Caspianberg

Well yes, so why does the government say it’s due to covid/ Ukraine/ Spain ish drivers? That’s not really island related. And it’s always been in the same location

It's a combination of things. The UK is a net importer of food which means that it is more exposed than most of Europe to disruption in supply chains, especially as there is widespread use of Just In Time logistics. This disruption is for a variety of reasons including the price of wholesale gas, Spanish lorry drivers striking over fuel prices, half of our ferries being stuck in port, a dust storm over Spain, the 'bread basket of Europe' being a war zone, sanctions on Russia...

Some rationing in Malta, the Netherlands and Spain:

18 March 2022
Lidl Malta rations basic items as staff blame Ukraine invasion
The bargain supermarket is placing limits on the amount of toilet paper, oil, flour, baby food, and canned foods...

www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/115746/lidl_malta_rations_basic_items_as_staff_blame_ukraine_invasion

Supermarkets in the Netherlands are starting to limit the amount of sunflower oil customers can buy as a shortage looms. Two-thirds of the Netherlands' sunflower oil is imported from Ukraine...

nltimes.nl/2022/03/18/supermarkets-limit-sunflower-oil-purchases-shortage-looms

MADRID, March 30 (Reuters) - Spain temporarily authorised stores to limit the sale of some products to prevent sell-outs when markets are under stress, days after some supermarkets ran out of sunflower oil and milk.

Supermarkets had been calling for legal backing for such rationing, which was announced by the government has part of an emergency package to mitigate the economic fallout of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and will be in place until June 30.

www.reuters.com/world/europe/spain-allows-rationing-products-case-market-stress-prevent-shortages-2022-03-30/

Just been on Tesco for my weekend delivery and there’s lots not available on my saved usuals list.

Morrison’s in Newcastle had no peppers or tomatoes on Friday, but Sainsbury, Aldi and Asda in Herts were all fine, no shortages.

My daughter is away at Uni, and as she’s coeliac, I get a GF Tesco shop delivered to her every couple of weeks

I’ve struggled to get her usual GF stuff. Lots of substitutions (GF profiteroles instead of GF sausages anyone?) and lots out of stock.

I went to Lidl on Friday and there were so many empty shelves. No crisps, no tinned tomatos, no tomato puree, no noodles, no wine

They said they were having issues with staffing at the warehouses. I went back on Monday hoping things would be back to normal but it was even worse.

@catgirl1976 Are you int he North West by any chance?

I've heard the warehouse staffing thing too - apparently they opened a new regional distribution centre (RDC) and moved a lot of the Runcorn RDC staff over to get it up and running. My local store manager told me with glee that his Area Manager had been sent to the warehouse to load lorries.

Lidl do seem have been struggling for months, but last Friday complete strangers were asking each other in the aisles what was going on.

I've given up ordering from Tesco for delivery. Now use Waitrose or Morrisons and have no problem with things being unavailable.

@Ducksurprise

Went into tesco today, it looked like they had been burgled.

Very similar when I went to my local Tesco last Friday.

There seemed to be a shortage of several things I needed but the worse one was the severe shortage of fruit and vegetables; what was there mostly seemed to be going rotten.

Is anyone really going to buy slimy brown lettuces?

@Otherpeoplesteens - yes I am North West

BRUSSELS 18 March 2022

Most of the supermarkets in Belgium have restricted the sale of various products such as oil and flour, toilet paper, and canned food, as the Ukraine-Russia war has pushed up demand.

www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/belgium-faces-oil-and-flour-shortages/2541875

@Carpediem15

Otherpeoplesteens - I use dried veg, onions, mixed veg, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers and courgettes. Buy online and at Lidl during Italian week along with their jars of peppers and cucumbers. Dried peas did not die out with our grandmothers, plenty cooked and stored in my freezer and you can buy freeze dried corn but we don't like it.

can you link to where you get this stuff online?

I buy my dried food from this company - www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/dried-vegetables
if you google the company they usually have code discounts plus they have offers, last month I was given 1.5kg of steel cut oats and they give money to keep in an account until you want to use it.
When Lidl have Italian week they have packets of mixed dried veg like toms, aubergine, peppers and courgettes and I stock up with them.

A lot of the post-Brexit ‘business as usual grace period’ stuff has run out now, so trade is a nightmare. Plus pandemic staff shortages etc.

I’m seeing other shortages. Can get what I need but not always favourte brands etc.

Do the people who think 'dried peas died out with our grandmothers' never eat mushy peas?

They're sold in every large supermarket in the country, apart from just before bonfire night, when everyone else usually gets there before I do.

@BarbaraofSeville

Do the people who think 'dried peas died out with our grandmothers' never eat mushy peas?

They're sold in every large supermarket in the country, apart from just before bonfire night, when everyone else usually gets there before I do.

Morrisons frozen ones are good - Asda ok - but they have just gone up from £1 to £1.50 a bag. A tip the bag into the Insta Pot Electric pressure cooker then when they are ready freeze them in 1 portion bags.

I'm in the EU. We have supply chain problems with certain things and the fear of rising prices, with big problems regarding the rise in the price of energy, but nothing like what you're describing.

[quote Clavinova]BRUSSELS 18 March 2022

Most of the supermarkets in Belgium have restricted the sale of various products such as oil and flour, toilet paper, and canned food, as the Ukraine-Russia war has pushed up demand.

www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/belgium-faces-oil-and-flour-shortages/2541875[/quote]
I live in Belgium and have noticed NO restrictions. None of the supermarkets I've been to have had signs up about the amount of any kind of food I can have.
I'd be interested to know which supermarkets are affected. I mainly go to Carrefour and Delhaize, the biggest groups here.

"Good, eating salad in winter is unsustainable. It won't harm people to eat seasonally."

Yes, it will. We have a population that doesn't eat healthily enough in the first place. If you take away options you make it even harder.
It's also not necessarily environmental. I was just reading the other day about how it's more ecological to eat tomatoes transported from southern Europe than those grown in polly tunnels in northern Europe.

We're all about to discover just how much of our fresh food is not produced in the UK. It's one of the things that helped me make my mind up about Brexit, back in 2016; wandering the produce part of our local Tescos and taking a look at how little was produced here. No one would listen though.

We're all about to have to get really inventive as well - no potatoes? Try rice. No rice? Try oats. Etc etc etc. I never thought I'd be grateful for our lockdown weight...we also bought some microgreen seeds a little while back and as soon as the frosts are over we'll be planting them. (We genuinely don't have space indoors so have opted for one of the tiny greenhouses this year.)

With an official world population of 8 billion that shows no sign of reducing or even stabilising, food security has been an issue for a lot longer than the powers that be would like any of us to know.

And now we've had Austerity, Brexit, the pandemic, and now the Russia-Ukraine war; but if you look at the last few years and how many harvests have failed or been very low yield around the world, the reasons for some of the shortages have been there for some time.

@Gwenhwyfar

"Good, eating salad in winter is unsustainable. It won't harm people to eat seasonally."

Yes, it will. We have a population that doesn't eat healthily enough in the first place. If you take away options you make it even harder.
It's also not necessarily environmental. I was just reading the other day about how it's more ecological to eat tomatoes transported from southern Europe than those grown in polly tunnels in northern Europe.

You will find that lots of the veg from Spain is grown under poly tunnels, looking down from where we used to live all you could see was a sea of plastic for miles. They would harvest all the tomatoes together over a couple of days and throw out all the vines so we would go down a couple of days later and collect the now ripened fruit. That was how to save money, making chutney, tomato sauce and ratatouille with the aubergines and peppers we would also glean for either the pantry or freezer. Here in UK we collect blackberries, friends give us apples and we make jam and pie fillings.

I went to Tesco today - there were loads of empty shelves. Hardly any salad left. It was messy with gaps everywhere- looked so run down

Most stuff in Spain is grown in poly tunnels. The plastic pollution when it shreds and blows away in the wind is one problem, the demand on water is something else, but energy use is not an issue. Not compared to northern Europe - UK to a certain extent but the Netherlands especially where things like tomatoes, peppers and aubergines are grown in centrally heated greenhouses through the winter.