A leading food processor in the United Kingdom is calling on the British government to take measures “to plug the gaps that are already appearing on our production lines” due to coronavirus.
Finnebrogue Artisan, a maker of sausage and other processed meats based in Northern Ireland, suggested that foodservice and other hospitality workers idled by the crisis be encourage to come to work on the production lines of food processing companies.
“We will need you to plug the gaps that are already appearing on our production lines,” the company’s chairman, Denis Lynn, said to the nation’s hospitality workers in a statement. “We need you to help us feed the nation.”
Lynn also suggested that the British government give the food industry a break from guidelines that anyone showing symptoms of COVID-19 self-isolate for 14 days. He said this requirement could “wreak havoc on our capacity to make the food the country needs.”
Some British supermarkets have started limiting customer purchases in an effort to stop panic buying. The UK has about 2,700 confirmed cases of COVD-19, with 137 deaths, according to worldometers.info/coronavirus. That death rate is more than four times per capita than that of the United States so far.
