Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

Brexit's legacy
Worst of both worlds for UK farmers
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UK farmers exporting to Europe have faced the full cost of third country status from the start, while EU exporters of animal products to the UK have effectively had a free ride in the absence of routine food safety checks on animal products arriving in the UK.

“For the past three years, our farmers have faced the full reach of EU controls on our exports while the EU has enjoyed continued easy access to the UK marketplace,” NFU president Minette Batters told Urban Food Chains. “This is not just an issue for competitiveness, with British farmers faced with additional costs and paperwork, but also for our nation’s biosecurity.”

Pic: NFU

“Proportionate and effective controls are necessary if we are to prevent outbreaks of pests and diseases that threaten human, animal and plant health, the safety, quality and biosecurity of our food products and the confidence of our trading partners.”

More detail on this paradox can be found here.

“It is vital that the government uses the latest delay wisely to raise awareness among EU exporters and to address the concerns expressed by many in the supply chain. This includes horticulture growers who continue to see the shift of controls away from their business premises to border control posts as a major point of jeopardy, with unknown costs and heightened biosecurity risks. This time should also be used to minimise unnecessary delays at the border once the new system is finally up and running.”

Brexit's legacy
Restoring checks on animal products will push up import costs
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The UK is at last preparing to complete the Brexit process. For two years randomised routine physical checks on imported animal products have not been carried out. In 2024, ports with Border Inspection Posts (BIPs) will start to undertake physical inspections. These will be comparable to those which have been carried out routinely at European BIPs from day one.

Checks on the documentation for inbound goods, however, is carried at the border. For inbound consignments of animal products, this is done at a BIP, for which an appointment is made. The resources and staff for these checks are charged to the owner* of the goods and amount to just under a tenner a tonne. The cost of physical checks will reflect the degree of sophistication involved, and will routinely come to hundreds of pounds.

The money charged for all this checking is not customs duty but it will be counted towards the customs valuation, an aggregate figure upon which 20% import VAT is due. Local authorities will collect the product checking revenue, HMRC will bank the VAT. Bringing in a full regime of product checking will add significantly to the cost of putting food on the market.

The UK government estimates that the additional fees for product checking and related services will add GBP 330 million a year across all imports from EU. The UK government claims that the impact on food and drink imported from the EU “… will not be significant.” This is a moot point.

Checking the documents for a consignment of animal products in normal office hours would cost GBP 196 at the BIP in East Midlands airport. A further GBP 64 would be charged for goods listed on additional veterinary certificates appearing on the same header document. Costs rise for out of hours inspections, for which prices are quoted on application. Bear in mind, however, that air freight consignments will be smaller than loads packed in containers.

Third country goods going into the EU face physical checks determined by the sampling rate fixed by the customs service. Traders shipping goods into the EU can earn a reduction in the frequency of physical checks, by complying with EU requirements. Think of it as time off for good behaviour. As a new third country, the UK has faced 100% sampling. UK exporters have been charged accordingly, unlike traders shipping to the UK.

*Ownership of goods in transit is a moveable feast. It is often transferred directly from the seller to the buyer when the goods are loaded on to a ship, but since the buyer may not be the end user at this point, there are a number of alternative outcomes. The shipping line often takes ownership for the duration of the journey, since owners can be required to make snap decisions in the event of accidents or mishaps.

soil renewal UK
Measuring progress
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On Your Farm presenter Charlotte Smith and Archers’ actor Lucy Speed open the programme from the middle of Devon by explaining that they are looking for a farm but are surrounded by large sheds and outwardly industrial structures. Somewhere in this seemingly inappropriate setting, they are expecting to meet Andy Gray, a possible finalist for one of the programme’s annual awards.

Andy’s business bridges the gap between livestock farmers and end users of meat. He operates the large food grade cutting and packing lines that they saw on arrival. As well as selling dog food, he also farms 150 hectares of arable crops, as well as keeping a herd of deer and a herd of cattle. Other business activities in his eclectic business include a quarry for heritage building stone.

During the visit, the conversation turns to remedial best practice for soil and the new funding schemes for English farming, based on the provision of a public good such as healthy soil. Rothamstead soil scientist Andy Neil is on hand to discuss some of the vital detail. Charlotte Smith is impressed that Andy should have engaged a Rothamstead professional to measure the recovery of former arable fields. Andy, on the other hand is pragmatic: if he can’t quantify the improvements he is making on his land, he won’t get any government cash. Gotcha.

customs clearance
Customs checks to cost importers 330m gbp
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After putting off the implementation of full customs checks five times for imported goods arriving in the UK, Westminster will start enforcing its post-Brexit customs regime for all imported goods in 2024. Cabinet Office minister of state, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, told MPs that the fully operational customs system would cost UK businesses an additional GBP330 million a year. About half this increase will be absorbed by veterinary paperwork, which was not demanded on day one of Brexit. The full cost of becoming a third country has effectively been concealed from the British public for five years and was only revealed on the eve of the Conservative party conference with a full and controversial agenda. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/01/uk-admits-extra-330m-a-year-charges-post-brexit-food-imports

Brexit's legacy
Home truthes about inflation
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Never mind those tired voices from government benches, proclaiming lower inflation rates. Prices are still going up, slower than before, maybe, but they are unlikely to stabilise with a government that routinely lies and prevaricates from force of habit. The only promise that Boris kept during Brexit was “F*ck business.” The rest was cake-ism.

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cultivation soil renewal
Going underground
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After centuries of agriculture, scientists are finally admitting that they are in the dark about the role of earth worms. Today’s Guardian carries a piece in which earth worms are estimated to add 140 million tonnes of wheat to the world’s wheat harvest, without a fully-argued reasoning of how they might do this.

There is more than “nice to know” involved. Crop scientists have been happy to spray crops without a full understanding of what makes them grow well. Shouldn’t we change this?

customs clearance
Is digital documentation secure?
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There is something to be said in defence of human-readable documentation. It’s not perfect, but you don’t need to open the file on a machine to get sight of it.

This summer, the European Union published its plans for an integrated digitised customs system to cover the entire single market. A single EU Data Hub will be phased in around 2028, providing a single unified portal for third country exporters to document shipments to the EU. Compliance, repeat orders, along with such customs documentation as will be retained by the new system, will all be locked up in this portal. The official line is that customs compliance will be enforced uniformly and centrally, giving customs officers “…a 360-degree overview of individual supply chains…” and freeing up resources to ensure that a centralised European Union customs agency will run like clockwork.

There are plans to abolish the 150-dollar duty-free allowance, a routinely exploited weak point in e-commerce. Consumers will no longer face unexpected charges on e-commerce transactions. This happy state of affairs will come about thanks to e-commerce platforms taking on the administration of tax and customs procedures. Sounds too good to be true.

customs clearance UK
Milestone or millstone?
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This week the UK delivered the world’s first fully digitally documented consignment of goods. Burnley engineering firm Fort Vale became the first UK exporter to put electronic documentation on an equal footing with paper forms. This was made possible by the Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA), which came into force on Wednesday. To be sure, the goods involved were not food products, but Urban Food Chains wanted to mark the occasion anyway. Here’s a link to the gov.uk statement.

canning food manufacture
A revolution in the making
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The Appertisation of food launched a slew of events that led us to greet the dawn of industrialisation. In the early years of the French revolution, confiseur Nicolas Appert standardised a process that was doubtless known to many at that time. Appert’s single-minded work on heat treating sealed jars, bottles and metal canisters occupied him for years. He filled notebooks and diaries with his observations, recording in minute detail the empirical foundations of his research. Nicolas Appert was a member of the revolutionary Lombard section, radical protesters who took to the streets of Paris at moments of high tension in the French revolution.

A confiseur is a cook who prepares a range of savoury and sweet dishes that have been given long slow cooking until the food almost turns to mush. The standard equipment in a confiseur’s workshop of the time was a copper of boiling water and seasonal ingredients. Today, the word confiserie refers to boiled sugar confectionery, although it probably covered a wider range of foodstuffs in Appert’s day. Most of the confiseur’s stock lines were sealed with a layer of fat and had no shelf life to speak of.

However, Appert’s sealed bottles could be stored with increasing reliability. This “time travel for food”was a pivotal discovery for the future of urban life. As word spread of Appert’s achievements spread across the French capital, Appert was awarded a substantial sum in gold coins, on condition that he put his method into the public domain. A copy of Appert’s instructions reached Bordeaux wine merchant Pierre Durand, who promptly patented the idea in England. As an early trader in intellectual property, Durand struck a number of deals, including one with engineer Bryan Donkin in Bermondsey. The events that followed are covered elsewhere in this blog, in a short story.

The development of Appertisation as a commercial process led to a scaling up of the cooking process. What started out as a hot water bath was reworked as an autoclave or retort. In 1852, one of Nicolas Appert’s nephews, Raymond Chevalier-Appert patented a key component for an retort — a manometer or pressure gauge.