UK's Largest Supermarket Begins Rationing Cooking Oil Amid Supply Disruption

If record-high food prices weren't enough. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has choked off the world of sunflower oil supply, forcing the largest supermarket in the UK to begin rationing.

The Guardian reports that Tesco, with more than 4,000 retail stores, placed buying limits of three cooking oil bottles per customer. It follows Waitrose and Morrisons, other supermarket chains that set limits of just two per customer.

The UK's biggest retailer is experiencing sourcing issues with cooking oil, especially sunflower oil, which much of it comes from Ukraine. As retailers panic about sourcing edible oils, it has driven retail cooking oil prices up an average of 20% over the last year.

Last week, British Retail Consortium's Tom Holder told the BBC that rationing was temporary "to ensure availability for everyone." He said supermarkets are "working with suppliers to ramp up production of alternative cooking oils, to minimize the impact on consumers."

Tesco said in a statement:

"We have good availability of cooking oils in stores and online. If a customer is unable to find their preferred oil, we have plenty of alternatives to choose from.

"To make sure all of our customers can continue to get what they need, we've introduced a temporary buying limit of three items per customer on products from our cooking oil range."

Supermarkets are also placing buying restrictions on olive and rapeseed oils. There was news Friday that the world's largest palm oil producer, Indonesia, announced an export ban of all cooking oil and palm oil products, which adds even more tightness to global cooking oil supplies.

Food rationing because of shortages are symptoms of an emerging global food crisis. Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah was nice enough last week to give Bloomberg Television's David Westin a timeline on when this crisis could erupt. Shah believes "in the next...

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