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The cross-party UK Trade and Business Commission will be examining this issue in detail on a potential EU-UK veterinary agreement, which will hear from leading industry representatives including the British Veterinary Association, British Poultry Council, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the National Farmers Union.
For the last five months, British exporters have faced difficulties with post-Brexit red tape and disruption at the UK-EU border. The new relationship between Great Britain and the EU (from 1 January 2021), has meant that British businesses now face new requirements imposed on exports to the EU. These include international sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) controls which significantly add to bureaucracy, cost and time.
This is having a profound negative impact on the amount of food exported to the EU. The Office for National Statistics reports a sharp drop in exports - a decrease of £8.9 billion to £137 billion in the first quarter of 2021, significantly impacting the viability of businesses in Great Britain.
The SPS Certification Working Group, a cross-industry, veterinary and environmental health group, in its new report Minimising SPS Friction in EU Trade calls on the Government to help resolve the severe impact on trade through a new approach by:
- Improving current systems to remove bureaucracy, reducing time, error and costs;
- Reviewing requirements for inspection and certification;
- Negotiating a form of mutual veterinary agreement with the EU which would ease problems trading food and feed between GB and the EU and GB to NI, and from EU to GB when full SPS import controls take effect in 2022 when, arguably, the situation will worsen further.
June 10, 2021/ British Veterinary Association/ United Kingdom.
https://www.bva.co.uk/
