In late 2004, while I was living in England, I came across a few stories about a lard shortage in Western Europe. Apparently the impending expansion of the EU lead to all kinds of cheap pork going to the new countries instead of towards lard production. The result was that all kinds of British grocery stores were out of lard in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The newspapers managed to get interviews with people worried that this shortage would wreck their Christmas baking.
Soon after I started reading about the Europe-wide lard shortage I started going to grocery stores to see if this shortage was as drastic as reported. It turned out that most stores were actually out of lard. To be sure I would ask store employees, many of whom were quite shocked when they couldn't find the lard (clearly they hadn't been following the lard shortage news as closely as I).
I was reminded of this product shortage a few days ago when Neil told me about the world-wide lemon juice shortage. Apparently, some kind of weather condition wiped out a big portion the lemon crop, thus reducing the number of lemons available for juicing.
The parallels are striking, a standard, but little used, product that you expect grocery stores to have and would be at somewhat of a loss if they didn't have what you were looking for. Hopefully not to many people have been put out by this shortage (or the lard shortage of 04/05).
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1 comment:
Thanks for the heads up. I will stock up.
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