Pasta, pies and paperwork errors: the reality of Brexit food checks

Detailed summary

Delayed deliveries and inspection hold-ups among issues facing hauliers navigating post-Brexit border processesThree small boxes of spinach and ricotta cannelloni destined for a…

Delayed deliveries and inspection hold-ups among issues facing hauliers navigating post-Brexit border processes

Three small boxes of spinach and ricotta cannelloni destined for a supermarket in Gibraltar languish on an EU inspector’s bench at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais.

They have been removed from a truck laden with perishables for British food lovers on the Rock – Morrisons steak and ale pie, family-size blocks of Morrisons cheddar cheese, ‘M’ Best coleslaw from Avondale foods in Craigavon in Northern Ireland and long-life milk.

“We have been here nine hours now. It is very difficult,” said the lorry driver, Daniel Vasco, as he prepared to restart his 24-hour drive from London to Gibraltar.

An official says the truck had originally planned to cross from England on a ferry from Dover but arrived via a freight train instead with the prerequisite dossiers of customs and food health certificates filed for arrival a few miles away.

“We had to create 78 different files,” she explains, adding the pasta had to be removed because of a simple error. “The health official had put today’s date rather than the use-by date of 16 November on the paperwork,” said Olivier Colin, the director of customer service for Eurotunnel in France.

This is the reality of Brexit and business is brisk. A few metres away in a refrigerated unit lie two pig carcasses wrapped in cellophane alongside several pallets of fresh food removed from different trucks that morning.

The French official explains that when they opened the truck the found they had fallen from their hanging positions and with a risk of contamination had, under the rules, to be removed and destroyed.

Paperwork that includes export health certificates, customs paperwork, veterinary certificates related to meat and transit documents did not exist when the UK was in the EU’s single market.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Guardian Business. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.