The United Kingdom overall loses around 171 million pounds of food a year due to seagulls, according to estimates from new research conducted by ‘Compare the Market’. The Independent newspaper reports it.
Whether it’s stealing fish and chips on the beach or aiming for a sausage roll at Greggs, the UK’s seagull population has become notorious for brazenly steal food from the hands of passers-by.
The survey on ‘robbed’ Britons
71% of Britons surveyed by ‘Compare the Market’ confessed to having been robbed or targeted by a seagull, making this experience almost as quintessentially ‘British’ as buying fish and chips. According to a survey of a nationally representative sample of two thousand adults in the UK, researchers concluded that seagull theft amounts to £171,889,518 of food per year.
This is based on a calculation applying the proportion of respondents who have experienced food stolen or attempted stolen by a seagull (71 per cent) to the UK adult population, and multiplying by the average number of times respondents reported actually experiencing the theft of food by a seagull in the last 12 months (0.8), with the average cost of food involved in a theft or attempted theft by a seagull being £5.50. The calculation assumes that the average value of food involved in a theft or attempted theft is representative of the average value of food actually stolen.
The ‘Gull Guarantee’
The traditional cod dinner tops the list of foods stolen by seagulls, with 72 percent of respondents reporting their fish and chip dinner had been stolen or had been attempted theft, followed by sandwiches (21 percent) and ice cream (20 percent). Based on these findings, Compare the Market launched the UK’s first ‘Gull Guarantee’ at Peter’s Fish Factory in Margate. From the afternoon of Thursday 27 August, customers who fall victim to a hungry seagull can have their stolen fish and chips replaced for free, with the insurance price comparison site providing a thousand pounds to cover the cost of seagull attacks, while funds last.
The ‘strategies’ against food theft
“We’ve all been there: You sit down with your chips, look away for two seconds and suddenly your lunch has wings,” he said Charlie Evansfinance expert from ‘Compare the Market’. He went on to point out: “Seagulls have long had a reputation for stealing straight from our hands, so we wanted to find out how much this type of beach theft is costing Brits. As it turns out, seagulls aren’t just stealing our food – they’re taking a chunk of our money too.”
More than three-quarters of Britons (76 per cent) say they have changed where or how they eat outdoors to prevent seagulls stealing their food, while almost a third (32 per cent) say they have abandoned, left or sacrificed it altogether. More than four in ten Brits (43 per cent) have chosen to hide their lunch from viewwhile almost a third (31 percent) swallowed food more quickly to protect it from seagulls. Finally, more than two-thirds (69 percent) of those targeted said they had seen their food stolen or been attacked more than once.
The ‘attacks’ of seagulls on other objects
Even those who managed to keep their lunch saw the seagulls in action, as 82 per cent of Britons witnessed someone becoming a victim of their comical food ‘heists’. The English also told of seagulls trying to steal anythingfrom a children’s toy (9 percent) to a can, up to bottles of any drink (7 percent), proving that nothing is off the menu for these scavenger birds.