Brexit clarity ‘urgently required’

While the majority of Scotland’s red meat processing sector is aware of the need to meet new export certification requirements and other measures necessary for trade to continue with Europe after January, the details, logistics and IT requirements for delivering this on the ground are far from clear.

Speaking yesterday at the launch of the annual Scottish red meat industry profile, Q MS se ni ore co nomist Stuart Ashworth said that while uncertainties remained over the future shape of any trade deals, the prospect of tariffs and quotas on export to the EU still represented a major uncertainty to the red meat sector which is highly reliant on exports to Europe.

But he admitted that even once these were finally sorted out there was still a huge amount of work to be done to ensure that ports and border crossings could continue to allow friction free trade:

“And while the sector is reasonably well placed in terms of understanding the need for export health certificates, there are still major hurdles in terms of the information required to set up the necessary technical support and the help desk which will be needed to ensure that the export trade can continue to run smoothly – so while the principles are well understood by the trade, the technical delivery still needs to be clarified,” he said.

And he added that the movement of meat products for processing across to Northern Ireland was even more difficult to understand :“The more you scratch the surface, the more confusion there is.”