Meat carcasses sent to EU for butchering amid UK worker shortage – Great Britain’s beef producers export to Ireland before reimporting, while pork processors consider the Netherlands

9 comments

  1. >One problem for pork producers is that any meat exported to the EU for butchering would not be allowed to be labelled as British pork when reimported to the UK for sale.

    Bad news for the mini UK flag business.

    >The move to export meat for processing will cost an additional £1,500 for each lorryload of carcasses, including fees for transport, as well as customs requirements introduced since Brexit, such as an export health certificate for each consignment.

    >Currently meat is checked in the EU when it is exported from Great Britain but not when arriving in the UK because the introduction of post-Brexit import controls on food and animals products has been delayed twice by the government and will now begin in July 2022.

    Bets on it being delayed again?

  2. Sounds like the UK is coming to the end of cheap labour. The downside of that is without a productivity increase, you end up exporting those jobs you once had.

    Similar to how the west exported all of its manufacturing jobs to china.

    Watching the UK is probably a time machine for the EU, as at some point it also will run out of cheap eastern-european labour as they’ll want pay rises.

  3. No labour shortage. It’s a wage shortage, and it’s a huge part of why people voted brexit.

    This is not a bad Brexit consequence, it’s an expected one, a hopes for one.

  5. I may have missed it in the article, apologies if I have, but as a % how much of overall meat produce is this effecting, it seemed a little vague on the details, sources appreciated. The only finite value I could see was 10 000 pigs, which they are considering sending to the Netherlands.

  7. Typical hysterical reporting from the Guardian.

    Their source is a quote from the CEO of BMPA (a lobby group who are comically anti-Brexit), here’s what he said in [September](https://trans.info/en/bmpa-warning-rings-true-british-meat-carcasses-exported-for-butchering-due-to-labour-shortages-260984),

    > “I’ve already got members that are actually saying, “well, we haven’t got enough butchers in this country, but we probably could ship them over to Ireland.” They could get it cut and packed up over there before being brought back. **One or two are thinking they might have to look at that**.”

    Great, so at most a *couple* of BMPA members were telling them in September (9 months into Brexit) that they may have to look into sending carcasses to Ireland.

    Fast forward to today, and the CEO of BMPA now *tells the Guardian* (we don’t have direct quotes) that the process is underway.

    How about some context please? It could well be that 0.1% of animal carcasses are being sent to Ireland for processing, in which case who gives a fuck, but no, the Guardian don’t bother with things like context.

    It seems extraordinarily unlikely that a meaningful percentage of UK meat processing is affected by this, give that this wasn’t a story 10 weeks ago or even in the preceding 8 months that we were not in the EU.

    In all likelihood, demand for meat has probably risen slightly with the widespread reopening of restaurants and events (which leads to more waste) and that has slightly tipped the industry beyond current capacity. That can be address in the short to medium term, and it will.

    But no, let the Guardian and the usual rabble on this sub have their day with the nothingburger that this story is.

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