The UK government announced this week that it is extending the grace period for implementing full border controls on goods travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland indefinitely.

The announcement was met with a muted response from the EU, which had agreed to a UK request for an extension to the end of September.

The decision by the UK to extend indefinitely comes as teams of officials have been meeting with industry and retail sectors to explore if a mechanism can be found to adapt the EU border controls model to operate alongside Northern Ireland being part of the UK internal market.

Farmers in Northern Ireland are concerned that solutions will not extend to include trade in sheep and seed potatoes, in the short term at least.

Sheep entering the EU single market are required to come from scrapie-monitored flocks in Britain and this will make it impossible for buyers from the island of Ireland to source breeding rams in Scotland this autumn. Similarly, trade in seed potatoes from Scotland to either jurisdiction in Ireland is no longer possible.

There has been no confirmation by the UK government that it will further delay the introduction of sanitary and phytosanitary border controls from 1 October on goods entering from the EU. Earlier this week, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said in an interview that he expected that would be the case following a meeting he had with Michael Gove.

Meanwhile, the UK Food and Drink Federation has revealed that a collapse in food and drink exports from the UK to the EU in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period in 2019.

Ireland is the UK’s biggest export market for food and drink and sales were down 27% in the first half of 2020 compared with 2019 to £1.4bn (€1.6bn).

Sales to the EU overall were down 27% to £9.2bn (€10.7bn) in the first half of 2021 compared with £11.1bn (€12.9bn) in the first half of 2019. The biggest falls were in beef, down 37%, followed by cheese down 34% and milk/cream down 19%.