Fewer options and higher prices? Britain prepares for Brexit checks on food imports

Fewer options and higher prices? Britain prepares for Brexit checks on food imports

The United Kingdom does not eat itself, relying on the European Union for fresh fruit and vegetables. That dependence has changed little since Britain left the bloc in 2020, and could now bring even more pain to consumers and small businesses.

Tuesday marks the start of the long-delayed post-Brexit introduction of physical checks on plant and animal imports from the EU. The surprise checks will be applied initially to products such as meat, cheese and some fish, and eventually to a range of vegetables and fruits.

Huge new charges on some imported food products will also come into effect, threatening to reduce consumer choice and drive up prices shortly after UK food inflation fell from double-digit rates. The measures coincided with dire warnings of possible rises in bread and beer prices due to the impact of unprecedented rain on Britain’s grain harvest.

The new regime for food imports is perhaps the starkest example of the painful border bureaucracy that UK and EU businesses will have to deal with in the wake of Brexit.

Before leaving the EU, Britain enjoyed unhindered access to a wide variety of foods produced in neighboring countries: cheese from France, peaches from Spain, artichokes from Italy. Meanwhile, the steady flow of EU agricultural workers is a boon to British farmers.

In a post-Brexit world, Britain’s food supply is more vulnerable to external shocks, although the associated labor shortages sometimes force local farmers to leave their crops rotting for lack of workers to harvest them.
UK industry groups say the extra red tape could mean thousands of pounds in extra costs every month for ordinary businesses, while detention at the border will reduce the shelf life of perishable products and increase food waste.

Eddie Price, director of the Birmingham Wholesale Market, which is home to about 50 businesses selling meat, vegetables, fish and flowers, said traders were worried about higher costs and delays at the border.

“There is concern that (food) may be held at the point of entry for several days and potentially reduce the value of the product and make it less available,” he told CNN. “There is a real concern, particularly among the larger importers, that it could add a few percentage points to their costs.”

The UK government insists the new controls are essential to ensure biosecurity and inspections will be phased in “in a reasonable and controlled manner,” with an initial focus on “high-risk goods”, a category that includes live animals.

“It is important to remember the cost of our border checks is negligible compared to the impact of major disease outbreaks on our economy and farmers,” a government spokesman said earlier this month.

Higher prices and border delays
The government estimates the new checks will cost British businesses about £330 million ($419 million) annually and increase food inflation by about 0.2 percentage points over three years.

But the Cold Chain Federation, which represents businesses that ship goods that require cold storage, has come up with a bigger number. It calculates that the new border measures could easily add more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) a year in costs to firms trading in perishable produce, even before fruit and vegetables, which may face fewer inspections, are included.

Additional costs of that scale would “significantly increase food prices and reduce choice,” federal CEO Phil Pluck said in a letter to environment and food minister Steve Barclay earlier this month.

“We also believe that this will threaten the viability of small and medium-sized enterprises operating in food retail, such as small garden centers, restaurants and eateries,” he added.

The British Retail Consortium, which represents major supermarkets among other retailers, is less concerned about the potential impact on food prices. Any additional costs from the new inspections and paperwork are “likely to be small compared to the £200 billion of food sales in the UK each year, meaning they are unlikely to cause any significant price increases,” according to the organisation’s food director. sustainability Andrew Opie.

“However, it is important that border checks run smoothly when they are introduced in April to avoid any risk of delays or availability issues,” he said in a statement.

It won’t help that trucks arriving from the EU via the Port of Dover and the undersea Eurotunnel, which handles most of the UK’s food imports, will be directed 22 miles (35 kilometers) inland for physical checks at different facilities.

‘Dangerous’ dependence
About half of the food on the British plate is imported, mainly from the EU — the Netherlands, France, Ireland and Germany are the biggest suppliers. Warmer Italy and Spain are also important suppliers of fresh produce, especially as shoppers in the UK are used to being able to buy almost any type of food year-round they can find.

By 2022, almost 40% of fresh vegetables consumed in the UK will come from the EU, according to official figures. A total of 53% is produced in the country and the rest is imported from other countries.

In terms of fruit, only 16% is produced domestically, with 28% sourced from the EU and 56% from the rest of the world.
This heavy reliance on food from other countries came into focus in February last year, when bad weather in Spain and North Africa led to shortages in Britain, prompting supermarkets to impose purchase limits on some staples, including tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

In an article in Nature published in June 2020, academics from the University of York in England argued that Britain is “dangerously dependent” on the Netherlands and Spain for “the bulk” of its fresh vegetable imports. “Whether this level of dependence can be sustained post-Brexit is debatable, to say the least,” they wrote.

But Jack Bobo, director of the Food Systems Institute at the University of Nottingham in England, said reliance on imports does not make food systems more vulnerable. “There’s a risk either way,” he told CNN, pointing to disease outbreaks or extreme weather events that could wipe out local production.

“The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and France… are all major global food exporters,” he added. “It will still be easier to ship to the UK than any other global market.”

‘Crisis’ or opportunity for UK farmers?
Prices at Birmingham Wholesale Market say the new border charges give local suppliers the opportunity to offer more competitive prices than their EU counterparts. “This is hopefully an opportunity for UK farmers,” he added.

The UK already uses about 70% of its land for agriculture, far more than the EU’s leading agricultural producer, according to World Bank data. Still, experts say the country has room to grow more of its own fresh produce, including apples, pears, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

But here too Brexit did not help, ending like the free movement of EU workers that British farmers had believed in for decades.

Seasonal worker visas were introduced temporarily to address this issue, allowing agricultural workers from the EU and elsewhere to work on UK farms for short periods. But with the program set to end at the end of the year, many farmers are filled with anxiety about what will happen next.

“No agricultural business knows if they will have seasonal workers for 2025. That is approaching a crisis,” Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), told CNN. “You’re not going to invest in production for the long term if you don’t know about access to your workforce.”

Brexit has also prompted the UK government to agree free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, giving countries with larger and more cost-effective agricultural industries tariff-free access to British supermarket shelves.

“Since the 2016 referendum our political system is in complete disarray. Agriculture has been sold on the market and used as a bargaining chip in trade talks,” said Philip Maddocks, CEO of PDM Produce, a salad grower in the English county of Shropshire, at the recent NFU Conference.

In addition to Brexit-related challenges, UK farmers have been squeezed by soaring input costs, including fertiliser, energy and labour. Supermarkets, some of which have significant power in Britain’s food supply chain, are often unwilling to pay more to local producers, opting instead for imports to keep their prices low.

In December, the government launched a review to “improve fairness” in the supply chain for fresh produce, which will investigate contractual arrangements between UK producers and retailers.

“I’m not so much in favor of subsidies, I’m in favor of reasonable food prices,” Maddocks said. “The government needs a strategy for food… that looks at the next 20 years, not five or one, even months, as has been the case in recent years.”