Tonnes of meat rot at border due to red tape
British meat exporters joined fishermen yesterday to warn that their exports to Europe were being crippled by post-Brexit customs red tape.
In the past two weeks fresh produce worth hundreds of thousands of pounds has been impounded at European ports for not having the correct paperwork.
One exporter currently has five containers’ worth of fresh pork that has been stuck in Rotterdam for two weeks because a veterinary certificate had been filled in incorrectly.
Another had five lorries, each containing 23 tonnes of fresh chilled meat, valued at £500,000 (NZ$954,000), impounded in Calais for three days.
Much of the meat will have to be destroyed; products such as pork and chicken need to be processed within eight days of slaughter. The industry has warned that European customers are looking for alternative suppliers as exporters suffer ‘‘catastrophic delays for perishable products’’.
‘‘The new post-Brexit customs system for meat products is convoluted, archaic and badly implemented,’’ said Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association.
‘‘If continental supermarkets are unable to have products delivered the way they need them to be, this trade will simply be lost as EU customers abandon UK suppliers and source product from European processors.’’
Seafood hauliers descended on Downing Street yesterday to protest at the disruption that has seen trade with the Continent grind to a halt because of delays at the border.
More than a dozen lorries with slogans such as ‘‘Brexit carnage’’ and ‘‘Incompetent government destroying shellfish industry’’ were parked in Whitehall, having been driven down to London from ports around the country.
Boris Johnson said that he understood the ‘‘frustrations’’ of businesses trying to export to Europe and said that any seafood businesses experiencing difficulty exporting to the EU ‘‘through no fault of their own’’ would be compensated.
He said: ‘‘I sympathise very much and understand their frustrations, and things have been exacerbated by Covid, and the demand hasn’t been what it was before the pandemic and that’s one of the problems we’re trying to deal with. Where businesses, through no fault of their own, have faced difficulties exporting where there is a genuine willing buyer, there’s a £23 million fund to help out.’’ – The Times