Poots: amount of red tape on NI food safety is just ridiculous
Agriculture Minister says ‘reality check’ is needed before EU’S grace period expires
A “reality check” is needed over the huge volume of food safety checks required under new Irish Sea trading arrangements, Northern Ireland’s Agriculture Minister has said.
Edwin Poots said the prospect of Northern Ireland having to carry out the same number of agri-food checks as the EU does as a whole is neither sensible nor rational.
“What has been imposed upon Northern Ireland is irrational, it is oppressive, it is burdensome and, actually, frankly, ridiculous,” he said.
The DUP minister was referring to a prediction made by his department’s chief vet last week when he said Northern Ireland could face having to complete 30,000 checks a week when a grace period limiting red tape on shipping supermarket goods from Great Britain lapses.
Briefing members of his Assembly scrutiny committee, Mr Poots asked where he is supposed to find the number of vets needed to take on this workload.
“At this stage, we’re potentially looking at around 400 staff (for the checks) and a very high number of vets being required,” he said.
“Now, I’m not sure where I’m going to get these vets because there already is a shortage of vets in the UK, so I’m not sure where we’re going to get them.”
He said he cannot allow vets to be diverted away from existing food safety work in Northern Ireland.
Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol was agreed by the EU and UK during the withdrawal negotiations in an effort to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.
It achieves that by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods, with regulatory checks and inspections now required on agri-food produce moving into the region from the rest of the UK.
The new arrangements have caused some disruption to trade since the start of the year as firms have struggled with new processes and administration.
Unionists are opposed to the protocol, claiming it undermines
Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.
Mr Poots welcomed the extension of the supermarket grace period to October but stressed that it only “kicks the can down the road”.
Last week loyalist paramilitary groups in the region temporarily withdrew their support for the Good Friday peace accord in protest at the protocol.
Mr Poots asked whether the EU is intent on “destroying” the peace process.
The minister acknowledged that the protocol does provide opportunities in respect of the unfettered access it offers traders to sell into both the EU single market and the UK internal market.
Using a footballing analogy, he insisted that benefit is significantly outweighed by the negatives, describing dual market access as scoring a “wonder goal” in a 6-1 defeat.
He said moving departmental vets from other food safety work would undermine Northern Ireland’s reputation for high standards.
“Taking vets out of meat plants, for example chicken factories and pork factories, to check something which has always been checked by vets (in GB) has been produced to the same standards as here and the rest of the European Union would be an entirely illogical thing to do and a complete waste of time and resource, and cause a significant addition to the cost of bringing food into Northern Ireland, and consequently an additional cost to the consumer,” he said.
“So we do need a reality check on all of this. I welcome the extension of the grace period. But that, to some extent, just kicks the can down the road.
“We need people to be realistic about this. You know you were told last week that Northern Ireland would have as many checks as the rest of the EU put together. How can that be a sensible or a rational place?”
‘At this stage, we’re potentially looking at around 400 staff for the checks and a very high number of vets being required’