Safety inspections on foods such as tomatoes and beef seen as bigger issue than customs checks

Food staples including lettuce, tomatoes and beef could be in short supply or even disappear from supermarket shelves after Brexit because of disruptive checks that will need to be conducted at ports, Eurotunnel and freight industry chiefs have said.



Scores of continental favourites that currently sail and rail through the French border – including oranges, lemons and avocados from Spain and fresh flowers from Holland – will be subject to phytosanitary checks in addition to customs checks after Brexit.

“Controls can take a few minutes to 48 hours if a laboratory test needs to be done,” John Keefe, the director of public affairs at Getlink, the new name for Eurotunnel Group, told the annual Multimodal logistics conference in Birmingham.

“Coming in through the Channel tunnel on an everyday basis are food, flowers … If the government turn round at the end of Brexit negotiations and say: ‘Sorry consumers, you will no longer be able to have fresh strawberries or fresh lettuce or fruits de mer from France, there is likely to be a strong reaction from consumers. If we go backwards from frictionless border, then we really have lost from Brexit.”

There will also have to be checks in Calais and other continental ports for British exports, meaning French diners may have to do without Scottish salmon or langoustines. Supplies of such foods from Scotland rotted on the roadside in 2015, the last time there were major delays in the ports.



Keefe said the phytosanitary checks legally required on both sides of the border were a bigger challenge than the high-profile issue of customs checks that is currently dividing the cabinet.

“If we are all happy eating frozen meat then it’s an easy win, but if we want fresh food and having it on our shelves 365 days a year then it’s a big problem,” he said. “We export about £8bn of fresh produce a year and import £12-13bn. That amount of fresh produce going backwards and forwards is far more of a risk for the government than is anything of customs or duty.”

Keefe said one problem was there were no existing border inspection posts to serve Folkestone and Dover, the gateway for the majority of fresh food supplies. It is estimated it could take between five and 10 years to put enough posts in place to deal with the volume of freight requiring phytosanitary inspection.



“One of the things the government is significantly behind the curve on is the whole border inspection posts. We have the cabinet talking about different customs partnerships, but what we haven’t seen yet is any kind of progress out of Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] in particular to provide us with some clear guidelines about how [border inspection posts] might develop,” he said.



Post-Brexit customs gridlock could choke UK trade, experts warn Read more

Keefe called on the government to urgently draw up a plan of action, as he said it was estimated it could take “anything between five and 10 years to build border inspection posts to deal with the level of traffic coming across a short strait”.

Representatives from the Dover Port and the Freight Transport Association had the same message. “It is the non-tariff barriers that could cause the bulk of delay,” said James Hookham, the deputy chief executive of the FTA.

Pauline Bastidon, the association’s head of European policy, told the conference: “Everything needs to be checked – animal products, animal feed, fruit and veg, raw meat, but also things like pot noodles and readymade meals with a little bit of meat.”

There are border inspection posts at ports and airports that are hubs for non-EU goods, such as Heathrow, Felixstowe and the Thames Gateway, but none in Dover or Folkestone.

Keefe told the conference that 20% of Eurotunnel’s freight was perishable food, and after Brexit trucks coming through Eurotunnel would have to divert their content to Heathrow or Southampton for inspection, cutting into the shelf life of fresh food and flowers.

The phytosanitary checks are a critical part of infection control to protect animals and the public and help stop the spread of everything from mad cow disease to Dutch elm disease.

They are also a vital weapon in the battle against cases of food fraud like the horsemeat scandal in 2013, when beef burgers sold in several Irish and British supermarkets were found to contain mixed meat.

The UK is not self-sufficient in food and relies on imports, an issue that farmers and food producers have said could lead to shortages of staples after Brexit.

Richard Christian, the policy director at Dover, said delays from checks could lead to miles-long tailbacks at the port and in Calais.

“We are open 364 days a year to keep the goods in the shops that we all enjoy. The second we stop that flow, that’s where we’ve got this problem,” he said. “The amount of time to process non-EU freight – on a good day it can take 20 minutes, it can take several hours, on a bad day it can take several days. Somehow we’ve got to get a few hours down to two minutes otherwise there will be a perpetual queue of 17 miles.”

Several executives at the conference poured cold water on the government’s current proposed solution for the borders. Peter MacSwiney, the chair of Agency Sector Management, a freight specialist, described the proposed customs partnership as “ridiculous” as it would require French, Belgian and Dutch authorities to reciprocate.

“Why would they invest in developing new IT systems to match ours when it was the UK that voted for Brexit, not them?” he said.

A Defra spokeswoman said its priority was “to maintain environmental, welfare and biosecurity standards in a way that supports trade and the smooth flow of goods”. She said the department was “considering our import controls for a range of scenarios to make sure we are ready for when we leave the EU”.