Britain facing desperate shortage of vets as meat trade hit by EU red tape
BRITAIN faces a chronic shortage of vets as experts warn that hundreds more will be needed to sign off meat and fish exports across the Irish Sea.
Strict European Union border controls mean supermarkets, food producers and Government agencies will need to find qualified vets to complete pages of documents for goods shipped between Britain, Northern Ireland and the EU.
There are growing concerns that gaps, already evident on shelves in Northern Irish branches of Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s, will become worse when new rules come into force in less than a month.
Around 75 per cent of all groceries bought in the province are sold by British chains Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Co-op, Iceland and Marks & Spencer, which ship the vast majority from distribution centres on the British mainland.
British Veterinary Association (BVA) president James Russell said between 400 and 500 vets working part-time will be needed to fill in additional Export Health Certificates for meat and fish products from sausages to salmon shipped to Northern Ireland alone. He said that was equivalent to 70 vets working full-time, with only limited help from ancillary staff possible.
Most vets allocate less than a day a week from their normal duties to satisfy the new administrative burden, he added, meaning far more needed to be found to ensure demands can be met.
Mr Russell said the new demand was ‘concerning’ given that a shortage of vets had already put huge pressure on his industry since the beginning of last year. A ‘triple whammy’ of demands has left British vets working flat out to cope with the needs of 3.2million UK households that have acquired a pet since the start of the Covid pandemic.
Coronavirus and new EU worker rules have also been blamed for a dramatic drop in the number of vets coming to work in Britain. Between January and May 2021, the number of vets registered to work in the UK from the EU was only a third of the figure recorded in the same period in 2019.
‘We’re really up against it here,’ Mr Russell said. ‘We’re working very closely with the Government and the Royal College [of Veterinary Surgeons] to ask what can be done to help support those vets carrying out these important functions.’
Meat and fish arriving from Europe into Britain will also need Export Health Certificates signed by a vet before they arrive under reciprocal Brexit arrangements from next month – and more vets will be needed to check the goods when they arrive.
The BVA and food giants have called for pen and paper documentation to be replaced with digital checks. The Government is understood to be seeking a renegotiation with the EU to significantly reduce the need for certification of goods from Britain to Northern Ireland.
While concerns have grown that Brexit Minister Lord Frost has not spoken to his counterpart in Brussels since July, it is hoped that talks over the so-called ‘sausage wars’ will restart this week. There is growing speculation that there may need to be an extension to the October 1 deadline to avoid a food supply disaster in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland.
The deadline is the latest in a wave of painful border controls to rock the food industry this year, which have led to prolonged delays at crossings and tons of food wasted as lorries are turned away.
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman said importers and exporters ‘should continue to prepare for the new checks coming in from October 1’.
He said: ‘We have taken a pragmatic approach to their introduction, phasing them in over a number of months [and implementing them later than originally planned] to give businesses time to adapt.’