{"id":64595,"date":"2022-02-08T16:16:10","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T23:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=64595"},"modified":"2022-02-08T16:16:10","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T23:16:10","slug":"supply-chain-strain-and-staffing-shortages-lead-to-empty-shelves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2022\/02\/08\/supply-chain-strain-and-staffing-shortages-lead-to-empty-shelves\/","title":{"rendered":"Supply chain strain and staffing shortages lead to empty shelves"},"content":{"rendered":"

F<\/span>ood supply has been an ongoing issue in many Alberta groceries stores, but it has become more of a challenge since the federal government implemented that all truck drivers would need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide proof of vaccination before crossing the border as of Jan. 15, 2022.<\/p>\n

B<\/span>renda Martin, a Buyer for Federated Co-operatives Limited, explains in all her thirty years working in the produce industry she has never seen anything like this before; especially where all levels within the industry, as well as the government, are requiring individuals to be vaccinated in order to get food on the shelves for consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be pretty, and I just keep telling people that are close to me that you might want to stock up on a few fruits and vegetables in your freezer and some canned goods; don\u2019t be a hoarder, but don\u2019t be afraid to have a few on hand, \u201csaid Martin.<\/p>\n

She says food supply worries were already an issue even before the federal government implemented that truck drivers be vaccinated because there has been such a backlog at the shipping ports due to how fast the Omicron variant has spread, which has created staffing issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the start of where the chaos begins because the freights are stuck on boats and then we can\u2019t get enough trucks or people who know how to run the equipment to unload the boats fast enough to have the product out in time to run their ripening cycles before they go onto store shelves, \u201csaid Martin.<\/p>\n

She said the best example is that they\u2019ve never had any issues in the past with shortages on bananas, and that\u2019s an item that they don\u2019t generally short because it\u2019s considered such a primary item. But due to the backlog of the boats in Los Angeles, CA, in the United States, they are now in a state where they are shorting bananas for the first time in her career.<\/p>\n

She says that it\u2019s exploded into even more problems now, there were limited people due to sickness, labour, and all the other things due to COVID that her company has never seen before, but this mandate now of truckers not being able to cross the border has impacted Federated Co-operatives Limited to a point where 20 percent of their workforce truckers will now not be able to cross the border due to the federal government’s vaccination mandates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of information about empty shelves and a lot of the problem too is the packaging that comes from other countries. We had an instance through the summer where we couldn\u2019t get cartons of watermelons out of Washington because they didn\u2019t have the cardboard or cartons because they were stuck on a boat somewhere, \u201csaid Martin.<\/p>\n

She also explained that there have been numerous problems at various times where they\u2019ve delisted items like salad dressing because they can\u2019t get the packaging materials for these products.<\/p>\n

Randy Hrabi, a Press Operator at Hood Packaging, expects the public to also see shortages on items such as sugar and flour due to how fast the Omicron variant has spread, creating staffing issues in his line of work and supply shortages due to truck drivers not being able to come over the border.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t think about the full picture and what goes on at all levels to get food on the shelves for the consumer, \u201csaid Hrabi.<\/p>\n

He said as a press operator for thirty years who prints the labels onto the bags that the sugar, flour, etc. go into, he has never advised anyone that there would be a shortage in these goods.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly certain individuals are fully trained and qualified to run the press machines that create the packaging for the sugar and flour bags, if all those individuals get sick, there is no one qualified to create the packaging that makes it possible for the basic essential goods to be put on shelves. That\u2019s not the only issue we are running into, even when all the qualified individuals are here to work, we don\u2019t have the supplies to create the bags because trucks can\u2019t get over the border to deliver the paper, ink, varnish, etc. for the presses, \u201csaid Hrabi.<\/p>\n

Going forward, Hrabi wants to see more relaxed rules regarding the vaccine from the government, more manpower in his trade, which would mean bringing more awareness towards his trade and into niche careers like his own, so they can have more people enter the industry to train.<\/p>\n

A GoFundMe campaign called the \u201cFreedom Convoy 2022\u201d<\/a> has been organized by Tamara Lich, who is a Board Member of the Maverick Party, and B.J Dichter, a former candidate of the Conservative Party of Canada, to help raise money for truck driver\u2019s cost of fuel, food, and lodging. The campaign has raised $5.6 million in donations so far. On the GoFundMe website, it says \u201cMoney raised will be dispersed to our truckers to aid with the cost of the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be pretty, and I just keep telling people that are close to me that you might want to stock up on a few fruits and vegetables in your freezer and some canned goods; don\u2019t be a hoarder, but don\u2019t be afraid to have a few on hand, \u201csaid Martin. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":687,"featured_media":64600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S1- \u2018It\u2019s not going to be pretty\u2019: says buying expert of produce - TN\u00a0","footnotes":""},"categories":[1431,9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-64595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-food-and-nutrition","8":"category-life","9":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64595"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64841,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64595\/revisions\/64841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}