The EU’s top negotiator Michel Barnier has accused Westminster of not being ready for detailed Brexit negotiations but the British Government is even less prepared to handle the fall-out of Brexit for British food supplies, according to leading UK academics.
The first major review of the implications of Brexit for UK food and agriculture has warned that Britain “is unprepared for the most complex ever change to its food system, which will be required before Brexit (and) poses serious risks to consumer interests, public health, businesses and workers in the sector.”
The damning report ‘A Food Brexit: time to get real’ was prepared by food policy experts from three universities and published by the University of Sussex.
One of the authors, Professor Tim Lang, said that 80% of the UK’s food legislation would need to be rewritten and yet there was still no Government vision for the industry despite the fact that the environment and food prices, quality and supply would all be adversely affected by Brexit.
“UK food security and sustainability are now at stake,” said Lang, an expert in policy at City University, London. “A food system which has an estimated three to five days of stocks cannot just walk away from the EU, which provides us with 31 per cent of our food. Anyone who thinks that this will be simple is ill-informed.”
The future structure of farming subsidies is up in the air, and Britain will need to replace 4,000 pieces of EU law relating to food and 30 EU-based bodies overseeing scientific and food regulations.
The industry is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector and contributes £28bn to the UK economy. Britain imports 80% of its fresh vegetables and 40% of its fresh fruit. The British Retail Consortium has warned that leaving the EU without a new trade deal could increase the prices of imported food by 22% because of the weaker pound and tariffs imposed by the EU.
Europeans make up 35% of workers in UK food manufacturing and a drop-off in immigration is already hurting the vegetable-picking and poultry farming industries. John Hook, the owner of PD Hook Chicken hatcheries in Oxfordshire says that even the prospect of Brexit is making it harder to find workers. “Europeans want to make a life but they’re worried about their future here,” he said. “At the moment there is no clear outcome after Brexit (so) if these workers have job opportunities outside of the UK they will take those.”
Brexiteers argue that leaving the EU represents a big opportunity for the UK food and drink industry to break into international markets but the University of Sussex review warned that new trade deals with countries outside the EU could lower food standards which are now monitored by EU regulations.
Farmers will be under pressure to use more pesticides and genetically modified organisms to compete with countries that have significantly lower food standards but the danger is that the resulting products would fall foul of safety standards in the EU, Britain’s biggest market.
One example is the gulf between the US and the EU in the regulation of eggs. In the US eggs have to be chemically cleaned and refrigerated and hens are not vaccinated. EU regulations rule out such washing and refrigerating of eggs in order to prevent bacteria buildup and all hens must be vaccinated against salmonella.
The UK fishing industry hopes to win exclusive rights to vast swathes of British fishing waters but is concerned that the Prime Minister could make major concessions to the EU on access to those waters after failing to make solid promises on the issue in her recent election manifesto.
William McCallum, the head of ocean issues at Greenpeace UK says that Brexit “has often been held up as a magic pill for the UK’s fishing industry.” “But now we’ve voted to Leave, it is far from plain sailing. One thing is clear: the UK government cannot settle back into its old habit of privileging a handful of large companies to the detriment of the UK’s small-scale fishermen. It wasn’t the EU that gave almost two-thirds of the entire fishing quota of England and Wales to just three companies – it was the British government.”
The one thing that is clear is the dramatic uncertainty Brexit has brought to the food sector, which will be almost impossible to resolve before the 2019 deadline for negotiations.
by Dominic Luca
The post Brexit: Experts Warn of Food Chaos appeared first on Felix Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment