The food and drink industry is demanding “urgent action” from the government to tackle a severe shortages of vets to process UK food exports after Brexit.
Industry groups warned that a sharp decline in EU vets registering to work in the UK since Brexit, coupled with an immense increase in paperwork for exporters, was creating an “unsustainable” staffing squeeze.
Food producers estimate that Brexit-related bureaucracy, which has seen the number of official export forms to be filled increase 12-fold since January 2021, is costing the industry £60mn a year.
Qualified vets are required to sign off the highly detailed export health certificates, or EHCs, needed to send food to the EU after Brexit, putting huge pressure on the UK’s network of vets, according to the British Veterinary Association.
The number of EHCs increased from 29,000 in 2020 to more than 288,000 in 2021, according to official government figures, requiring the equivalent of 580,000 hours of work for vets.
James Russell, senior vice-president at the BVA, said the nosedive in EU veterinary registrants since Brexit, coupled with soaring demand for veterinary certification, was creating “a storm of shortages” in the profession.
He added that shifting vets from farm work to export certification work was just “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
“The potential consequences are worrying. If we can’t find long-term solutions to veterinary workforce shortages we will see impacts on animal welfare, public health, and international trade,” he warned.
Before Brexit, EU vets working in the UK were a critical part of the certifying workforce, according to the BVA. However, since new immigration controls came into force in January 2021, the numbers applying to work in Britain fell from 1,132 in 2019 to just 364 last year, according to data from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Food industry groups estimate that absorbing the costs of the new sanitary and phytosanitary measures — so called SPS checks — would require an additional £3bn of sales in the first year of Brexit.
The Food and Drink Federation, the industry lobby group, calculated that food sales to the EU fell by £2.4bn, or 23.7 per cent, in the first three quarters of 2021 as a result of Brexit red tape and Covid-19.
Karin Goodburn, director of the Chilled Food Association, said the figures were actually an underestimate of the total cost to the food industry as they excluded the wider costs of new bureaucracy for agrifood products.
Post-Brexit rules requiring detailed documentation of source produce in composite products, such as ready meals or processed snacks, were further straining the system, and many food companies had ceased trading with the EU as a result, she said.
“Without urgent action the situation is only set to deteriorate and there are no quick fixes. As an example, it takes more than five years to train the vets we need to certify the EHCs,” Goodburn added.
The SPS Certification Working Group, a cross-industry body that includes 26 food producer groups, from millers to petfood producers and shellfish farmers, is demanding that the government do more to ease the short-term recruitment of vets and speed up the process of digitisation of certificates.
The group, which is chaired by Goodburn, is asking the government to seek a formal SPS agreement with Brussels to reduce checks — something the government has consistently ruled out on the grounds that it requires too much alignment with EU law.
The British Meat Processors Association said the BVA’s report underlined that current export certification arrangements were “unsustainable”.
“The entire British food industry needs a solution which removes the need for these processes and that requires a comprehensive veterinary agreement with the EU based largely on some form of alignment. Not only will this cut costs but it will put veterinary resource back where it is needed,” the BMPA added.
Defra,, the agriculture department, said it was taking steps to address the issue, including more funding, adding vets to the Home Office’s list of shortage occupations and tripling the number of official veterinarians qualified to sign EHCs.
The department said it was also in discussion with the European Commission and would welcome any flexibility that could be offered by EU border control points in handling SPS issues.
“We continue to work closely with the meat-processing and veterinary industries to ease any pressures on the market,” the department added.