This year’s Christmas dinner may be missing a key ingredient: British turkey.

Members of Parliament were warned on Tuesday that due to Covid and Brexit, inedible pigs were slaughtered due to the lack of seasonal workers and that unpicked fruits and 300 tons of daffodil bulbs fell on small heads.

Graeme Deere, chairman of the British Poultry Council, told members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that turkeys may have to be imported from Europe.

"We will do our best to ensure that Christmas is as normal as possible, but there may be shortages. If we knew as early as June or July, the problem would have been resolved," he said.

"About 90% of our shortages occur in processing plants. Ironically, we may find ourselves having to import turkeys from France and Poland as part of the British Christmas, and there may be some workers we trained have left. Go back to their hometown."

Dier revealed that the poultry industry is experiencing a labor shortage of about 16%-and said the government's delay in allowing 5,500 seasonal migrant workers to enter the country means that they are late to meet the holiday peak.

At the same time, the agricultural department warned that the facilities are being "sealed up" and that a large amount of agricultural products will be wasted due to labor shortages.

Tom Bradshaw, vice chairman of the National Farmers Union, told the committee that almost a quarter of the daffodil crop this year was wasted because it could not be picked.

He added: "The food waste we see at the farm level, whether it is zucchini, unpicked apples, fall raspberries that have not yet been picked, or the tragic culling in the pig industry, is completely unforgivable.

"Developing a solution is a gift from this government, which means that this will not happen next year, but it needs to happen urgently because we lack confidence in multiple departments, which means that investment plans have been shelved, and many are back-up facilities. .

"Our greenhouses should grow tomatoes, but they are currently being sealed because they don't know if there is labor to pick them, and energy costs are also rising and having an impact."

The UK pork sector responded to concerns about the backlog caused by labor shortages.

Charlie De Whist, policy adviser to the National Pig Association, told members of Congress: "The situation in the pig industry is that the shortage of processing plants has caused more pigs to stay on the farm and cannot enter the food supply chain.

"Some people have reached the point where they have no emergency reserves to store these animals. They have been eliminated, and in the welfare elimination, they have not entered the food chain.

"For this industry, this is a deeply painful time."

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