Graeme Dear News Today

Vegetables are being left to rot in fields due to a chronic crop picker and driver shortage, as recruitment bosses urged UK officials to let in ten times more foreign workers to solve the crisis.

Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said beef producers were shipping supplies to Ireland by ferry for cutting and packing before re-importing them.

The Leicester-based manufacturer said products including multipacks of ready salted Walkers, Quavers and Wotsits had been affected amid a wider crisis across the food supply chain.

A warning has been sent to MPs over a concern of lack of British produced turkeys at Christmas.

Graeme Dear, chairman of the British Poultry Council, warned that turkeys may have to be imported from Europe due to shortages.

Industry leaders say it is evidence of a wider crisis across the food supply chain caused by a chronic lack of workers. Around 20 per cent fewer birds have been reared this year on British farms.

Poultry industry chief tells MPs the government's overseas workers scheme has come too late.