An uptick in the adoption of dogs and cats during the coronavirus lockdown in the U.K. has led to a shortage of pet food. Supermarkets in the U.K. have announced that there is an "unprecedented" demand for cat food and that they only have a few months of food left in their stock, according to a report by BBC.
Two million people adopted a pet for the first time in the U.K. even before November's second COVID-19 lockdown which saw another surge of Britons taking on pets.
While the data seemed like good news for pet food manufacturers, the demand has exceeded the supply and there is a scarcity of pet food in the country.
Sainsbury’s, the U.K.'s second-biggest grocery chain, sent an email alert to customers who buy pet food regularly to apologize about a “national shortage of dog and cat food pouches."
“We think this issue will be ongoing through the year, but we hope to get them back on to shelves as quickly as possible,” the email said.
Pet food pouches are in especially short supply and Sainsbury's urged customers to opt for alternatives while it resolved the pouch supply problem, according to The Guardian.
Supermarkets have asked panicked pet owners not to purchase more food than necessary. Pet food manufacturers, on the other hand, underlined that the U.K. market grew at an unexpected level, noting that demand increased threefold.
