Government must cater to 'vegans and vegetarians' when prepping for the apocalypse, expert warns
27 May 2025, 10:11 | Updated: 27 May 2025, 11:31
A leading professor has suggested that the British government should give more thought to vegans when catering for a potential apocalypse.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
It comes amid warnings that Britain is grossly unprepared for potential “shocks” affecting the food supply chain should a national incident take place.
Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, told visitors to Hay Festival that the British government had given little thought to items including ration packs, which could prove vital in such a situation.
Highlighting the growing possibility of a nationwide cyberattack, Professor Lang noted that such incidents hold the potential to severely disrupt Britain’s “vulnerable” food chain.
In such a scenario, the professor, who works at the Centre for Food Policy at City St George’s, University of London, suggested that the distribution of ration packs could offer assistance.
Explaining his theory, he said that if people were “in psychological shock they need to have things they are familiar and comfortable with".
Read more: Charles to open Canada’s parliament with 'historic' speech on day two of state visit
“They [the population] have just experienced new things — explosions, energy outages — and you don’t want people used to a halal diet to have to eat a non-halal diet for example or vegetarians and vegans to have to eat meat.”
“It will be very different from 1940 and 1916 and we have not been planning for that,” Lang told the Hay Festival.
Highlighting the attitudes of allies who he sees as being better prepared, Mr Lang said the likes of Germany and Sweden are already “getting into the minutiae about different diets, different ethnicities”.
Speaking alongside Professor Lang, Sir David Omand, the former director of GCHQ, told the festival that Britain’s “complex” food supply chains make it “more vulnerable” in the instance of a nationwide cyberattack or military attacks from foreign nations.
He explained that Britain would “struggle” in this instance.
Highlighting the reliance on big-name supermarkets, Mr Lang touched on the recent outage which affected both the Co-Op and M&S.
Recent weeks have seen M&S suffer a huge cyber attack at the hands of hacking group Scattered Spider.
The high street giant famous for it's fashion and Food Hall has suffered almost a week of financial lost and widespread disruption as all online orders and transactions have been forced to cease while many Marks and Spencer shops themselves are seeing empty shelves.
Lang highlighted that these attacks would have been of a different magnitude if hackers successfully targeted the likes of Tesco, which “sells nearly a third of all food”.
