From bad to worse

No procedural detail is too small for food and farming ministry DEFRA miss an opportunity to dismantle any vestiges of EU compliance it can get its hands on. 

For example, on January 1, 2025, the EU Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR) will come into effect and require the European food industry to ensure that basic ingredients such as soya and palm oil have not been harvested from forest that has been recently cleared, or has been a source of forest degradation.

There is nothing unexpected in this: there have been a number of consumer-driven campaigns to harry the food industry into improving its environmental track record. Typically, companies have responded by setting up lookalike groups such as the Rainforest Alliance, which allow multinationals to feel good about their corporate foot dragging and  buys them time. The EU Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR) has the task of ending years of lip service to good intentions and tackling increasingly obvious vulnerabilities in the modern economy. 

Soya and palm oil are two cornerstones of today’s food industry. From livestock to highly processed foods, the whole sector depends on reliable ingredient supplies. The burden of proof is on suppliers, who will have to provide evidence of their product’s provenance and full traceability. European food companies have been preparing this shift in manufacturing practice for months, if not years.

Dairy products are not covered by EUDR, but livestock farmers and meat processors who want to ship cow beef to Europe after January 1, 2025 will need to be ready for the far-reaching changes. Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have an extra six months to comply.

The UK has a parallel scheme that will respond to a number of subtly different issues, the UK Forest Risk Commodity Regulation (UKFRC)  There is not a lot of detail on UKFRC, but DEFRA has confirmed that dairy cattle and their products will be within the regulation’s  scope if the livestock’s diet includes soya or palm oil by-products. 

The impact of having two similar but incompatible standards at the heart of the food sector should not be underestimated. The cost of managing more than one  standard in a business is potentially exponential. It is not something that businesses would consider, let alone adopt willingly. 

Undaunted by the potential costs or consequences of its systematic detuning of international standards, DEFRA is continuing to look for things to tweak. During the last week of August, the ministry released a series of changes to the management of food imports to the UK with immediate effect. The long term aim is to grow the user base for the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, which will eventually manage all lorry movements across Britain. This UK government IT system will control and co-ordinate the post-Brexit movement of vehicles. A Wikipedia contributor has estimated that it will need to be capable of handling 400 million movements a year. Whatever the real figure turns out to be, the system will have to work flawlessly.