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Customers - but no products - at an east London supermarket
Photo: DANIEL LEAL / AFP
Henry Dimbleby is the co-founder of a major UK restaurant chain - and adviser to the UK government.
In this role, he is actually supposed to help develop a modern food strategy.
Dimbleby has now spoken out in many British supermarkets about the current supply crisis - and has harshly criticized the government.
Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey recently said that the shortage of eggs and vegetables was not due to "market failure".
Consultant Dimbleby vehemently contradicts this view: it is a failure of the British food market.
The reason for the problems is a - especially British - "strange supermarket culture," quotes the newspaper "Guardian" Dimbleby.
In the United Kingdom, it has become common for supermarket chains to keep salad prices unchanged over long periods of time.
The companies would negotiate fixed prices with the suppliers.
However, this prevents any adjustment of the market to shortages.
Suppliers prefer to sell to Germany
While supermarkets in Europe increased their prices after prolonged bad weather, that is not happening in Great Britain.
"And that's why the suppliers on the edge of the market will deliver to France, Germany and the Ukraine," says the government adviser.
They could make more money there.
Since the government is not tackling this fundamental problem, Dimbleby expects the situation to deteriorate further: "It's going to get worse."
He is backed by Timothy Lang, a retired professor of food policy.
According to Lang, he was “not in the least” surprised by the current bottlenecks.
The government should have intervened long ago and not left pricing in the hands of retail giants like Tesco.
There have been shortages of fruit and vegetables in the UK for weeks.
Chains like Tesco, Asda and Aldi have had to restrict purchases of certain goods, including tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.
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