British meat factories have warned in a letter to DEFRA Minister George Eustace that meat exports could collapse by up to 75% from 1 January, as there won’t be enough vets available to sign the required export health certificates for meat.

The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) has called on the government to instruct and pay vets employed by the Food Standards Agency or other government agencies to play a direct role in supporting the export certification process for products of animal origin.

"We face a resourcing crisis. Government agencies do not have enough vets (certifying officers) to meet the exponential increase in demand that there will be across the food supply chain on the 1 January 2021 and therefore will not provide export health certification for the site and products that they are supervising," the letter said.

Issue

This is a particular issue in England and Wales, where vets employed or contracted by the Food Standards Agency in meat factories to deliver official controls are not required to certify exports. It is different in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where vets delivering official controls are employed by the Department.

The UK meat export industry is worth £1.6m (€1.8m) annually, and BMPA says that the reintroduction of export certification requirements for sales to the EU will cause a tenfold increase in the demand for certificates.

Comment

The UK overall consumes 20% more beef than it produces, so it may appear that it should not be dependent on exports. However, it exports 148,000t of the 900,000t it produces, according the levy board, AHDB.

This is mainly cuts of beef that aren’t popular with UK consumers. There is another massive internal UK trade that will require veterinary export health certs. Huge quantities of carcase beef and lamb are transferred between the major meat processors in Britain and Northern Ireland (NI) factories for deboning and processing in their NI factories.

The extent of this is demonstrated by the NI beef and sheep industry producing generating £1.436bn (€1.6bn) in 2018 on a cattle kill of approximately 440,000 and sheep kill of 418,000. The NI processing industry supplements this with beef carcases imported from the Republic of Ireland and Britain.

After 1 January, any beef carcases transferred between companies factories in Britain and Northern Ireland will have to have veterinary certification, but if there aren’t enough vets available as BMPA warn, this business will be jeopardised.