If there’s one thing that completes Christmas day it’s the food.
Sure, we all love the Christmas gifts and spending time with our family and friends and getting into the festive spirit is always fun.
But for most of us, our annual Christmas dinner is the meal we look forward to most all year round.
And after waiting a whole 365 days to sink our teeth into our all-time favourite dish, we expect it to hit all the marks.
But it turns out that this year there could be one vital piece of the puzzle missing.
MORE: The REAL meanings behind our favourite Christmas traditions
According to the meat industry, this Christmas could see short supply of arguably the best part of our meal – pigs in blankets.
The last few years have seen a surge in pigs in blankets products, with supermarkets across the country serving up large sausage versions of the dish, pigs in blankets wreaths and even pigs in duvets – to name a few.
But this year a lack of workers could mean that the succulent bacon wrapped sausages that we have become so addicted to could be in short supply.
The British Meat Processors Association has said that any product that requires excessive labour, such as pigs in blankets that need to be rolled by hand, might not have enough workers to go around to complete the work.
“When it comes to Christmas, we often want our meat to be a bit special,” said chief executive Nick Allen.
“The classic example is pigs in blankets. These are incredibly fiddly and very labour intensive.
“Packing plants need 10-15 per cent extra labour to get everything ready. And this is a challenge at the moment because of Brexit.”
“The meat industry is trying to juggle,” added Nick, “but something has got to give somewhere. There’s only so much overtime you can ask workers to do.
“It’s all the little extras that make it Christmas which create the extra work, and that’s where we’re struggling.”
Looks like we might have to come up with our own versions this year. Pigs in slankets anyone?
