The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) has called for the government to press ahead with negotiating a new veterinary agreement with the EU, in a new Meat Industry Manifesto.
Launching the manifesto, the BMPA warns that the British abattoir industry is under threat from falling farm production, increasingly onerous trade barriers and a systemic labour shortage and points out that abattoir numbers have declined from around 2500 in the 1970s to just 203 today.
“This should worry UK consumers and government alike because, once we go beyond a tipping point where we don’t have a viable abattoir industry, it will lead to a sharper decline in domestic farming, a heavier reliance on imported meat and the loss of a key pillar of UK food security. It’s already happening. Growth is turning to decline,” the association said.
“This might be a contentious statement, but the meat processing industry can survive without British livestock. If necessary, British meat processors could replace meat from UK reared animals with imported meat, and just focus on processing and packaging products for sale. But British livestock farmers can’t survive without abattoirs.”
The 20-page manifesto includes a number of changes the association would like to see, as the new government settles into power.
“The single thing that would bring the biggest benefits to the UK food supply chain and British shoppers alike is a veterinary agreement with our biggest trading partner, the EU,” it states.
Defra secretary Steve Reed has promised to negotiate a new veterinary agreement with the EU to ‘cut red tape at our borders and get British food exports moving again’.
In its manifesto, BMPA says a common veterinary agreement would be ‘a simple, pragmatic solution that would restore our two-way trade in food to the efficient, cost-effective system it was before, but without the need to re-join the EU’.
“A common veterinary agreement would simply formalise the UK’s adherence to the food standards that it must already follow in order to trade with the EU. And it would do away with the mountain of red-tape and extra cost that the industry is currently labouring under.”
Alongsie, this the manifesto calls for ‘formal alignment with EU sanitary and phytosanitary regulations’ to facilitate trade both ways.
It urges the government to ‘match British Standards with those of our new trading partners with whom we sign free trade agreements’ and for ‘any requirements or standards that are developed from newly developed environmental metrics should be proportionate, so food producers can reasonably comply with them’.
You can read the full manifesto, including more recommendations, HERE
BMPA CEO Nick Allen said: “Since we left the EU the British meat industry has come under pressure from increased bureaucracy, tougher trade barriers and worker shortages. Government policy has played a dominant role and shaped the current trading environment.
“But many policy decisions have been made in a departmental vacuum, without a full understanding of the impacts and unintended consequences they will have on different parts of the food chain. Often, one problem is fixed, only to create another.
“We see the election of a new Labour government as an opportunity to re-set how government and industry work together to share on-the-ground intelligence that will help shape pragmatic, workable policies that strengthen Britain’s long-term food security. Our Meat Industry Manifesto sets out that ideal big picture and offers practical solutions to achieve it.”