Dairy farmers cry over spilt milk as tens of thousands of litres destroyed amid driver shortages
Dairy farmers have had to pour tens of thousands of litres of milk down the drain thanks to the HGV driver shortage.
One farmer told Sky News he had had no option but to pour 40,000 litres of milk away over the past couple of months after there were no drivers available for collection.
The anonymous dairy farmer said he has only ever had to get rid of milk loads two or three times in 45 years because of poor weather.
He said: “It’s cutting, it’s emotionally draining when you’re producing milk and at the end of the day you have to pull the plug and it has to go.”
Luckily, consumers have yet to see the impact of supplies being destroyed, thanks to the amount of milk produced by British farmers.
Farmers will feel the impact of wastage very quickly, one trade body added.
“I don’t think things with global supply chains have settled down again after the pandemic, and the shortage of HGV drivers is having quite a large impact,” Peter Alvis, chairman of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers said.
Dairy farmers are not the only part of the farm-to-fork supply chain to have been hit hard by staff shortages.
Pig farmers said they had been forced to begin the UK’s first cull of healthy animals since records began thanks to a shortage of butchers.
Farmers said they had to cull animals on their farms to avoid spilling over the legal limits for stocking density.
“Those pigs, when you ate them, were not alive. I’ve got to break it to you,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in response to a journalist’s question about the issue at Conservative party conference.