23.5 %
64.7 %
11.8 %
Post-Brexit food labelling rules to appease DUP will lead to higher prices, says industry
Draft legislation is intended to ensure full array of products are sold in Northern Ireland
Forcing all UK supermarkets to put “not for EU” labels on meat, dairy and plant products in a move to assuage the concerns of unionists in Northern Ireland will force up prices and undermine the war against inflation, ministers have been told.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... s-industry
After months of uncertainty about the post-Brexit regulations, the government has said it will legislate so that the labelling requirement is universal from October as part of a “safeguarding the union” deal with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP).
The government is trying to convince the DUP, Northern Ireland’s biggest unionist party, to return to the Stormont power-sharing executive after a bitter two-year standoff over the trade border in the Irish Sea created by Brexit.
As part of the new deal, ministers have said they will go further than is required under the so-called Windsor framework agreement with the EU that is designed to ensure meat, diary and plant products do not enter the single market via Northern Ireland.
Rather than just products coming into Northern Ireland from Britain requiring “not for EU” labels, all agri-foods sold in the UK will need to be labelled “to ensure no incentive arises for businesses to avoid placing goods on the Northern Ireland market”.
Unionists have raised concerns that restricting the labelling requirements to goods transported into Northern Ireland from Great Britain would lead to a dwindling in the range of products going across the Irish Sea.
Waitrose is among the supermarket brands that do not have stores in Northern Ireland but which will be affected by the draft legislation. It has claimed that redesigning the packaging will “add unnecessary costs when we are doing everything we can to keep costs down”.
...and all because Sammy Wilson couldn't bring some English sausages over the North Channel. That and the fact that a bunch of narco-terrorists were finding their drug shipments were getting stopped.
