The time has come to build your underground bunker, people. No, it won’t be used as a shelter during nuclear war or a catastrophic natural disaster. Instead, it will house all the cheese you’re about to stockpile because we have some dire news: The cheese crisis is coming. Gird your loins!
Listen, we hate to place blame during moments of crisis. But truth be told, the impending “dairy dilemma,” as London School of Economics (LSE) calls it, is directly linked to Brexit — Britain’s plan to leave the European Union.
A July 17th LSE report called “The impact of Brexit on the UK dairy sector” finds that Brexit can potentially cause “non-tariff barriers to trade and restricted access to labour.” This means that the availability of butter, yogurt, and cheese in the United Kingdom will be extremely restricted post-Brexit. And the dairy products that are available post-Brexit will be lower quality, yet sold at higher prices.
The study notes that after Brexit, importing anything from Europe (ahem, all the good cheeses) will become much more difficult. The more difficult and costly importing goods is, the more money that’s charged for those goods.
If the LSE study proves to be true, cheese in the U.K. will become a luxury item.
The country’s leading dairy company, Arla Foods U.K., commissioned the LSE study in order to prove that as it stands, Brexit would have a detrimental impact on the entire U.K. dairy industry. Managing director for Arla Foods U.K., Ash Amirahmadi, stated in a press release, “There’s no margin to play with here in the value chain. Any disruption means that if we don’t get the practicalities of Brexit right we will face a choice between shortages, extra costs that will inevitably have to be passed on to the consumer or undermining the world-class standards we have worked so hard to achieve.”
Amirahmadi added that the only way to avoid the cheese crisis is if both political sides work together to iron out Brexit practicalities and prepare “frictionless customs arrangements and ready access to key labour,” for when the plan sets into motion.
Otherwise, cheese-lovers and dairy-heads in the United Kingdom are doomed. We’re sending our gouda thoughts and parmesan prayers to our overseas brethren.
