By Howard Hollingsbee
Those of us of a certain age and musical interest will remember the old Bob Dylan song also by George Harrison, but what does the label on food “Not for EU” actually mean?
It’s being seen on an increasing number of products on supermarket shelves in this country.
We who rue the day that UK voted, by a tiny majority of those who chose to vote, to leave the community of our closest trading partners, might think that the label means that the product does not comply with standards of rearing, processing, packaging etc., required for sale in the European Union.
The reasons are more bureaucratic and arise in part from the hard-to-rationalise “Schrödinger’s border” between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland (and hence the rest of EU). The contortions that were contrived after Brexit, to avoid a hard border between NI and the Republic lie behind it, as part of the Windsor Framework, designed to support easier trade between the UK nations of Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
Up to this point, my own views show (and are further italicised below). Other advice is extracted from The Statutory Instrument and a very helpful analysis by Rebecca Kaya, under the Ashbury Global header.
The requirement for the labels, an element of the Windsor Framework to facilitate the “green lane” for certain goods from GB to NI is not yet enforced law in UK but, at least until the change in the summer, the previous government asked industry to prepare for that by this month (October 2024). It will be interesting to see whether the new government proceeds, given that the once-pariah-words “single market” are now being heard around Westminster. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Labelling regulation in the UK is devolved, but the Statutory Instrument states that a labelling requirement only on goods in the NI market would be a disincentive for businesses and traders to place goods for sale on the NI market – so, another complication ……
The issues most likely to interest (or least likely not to interest) readers of the CfE newsletter? :-
1.Products it applies to
So-called “high-risk products”, including meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, composite products and fish.
2. Does the “Not for EU” label reflect the quality of products? At least with respect to just the labelling, no. UK food regulations are mainly EU-retained: it’s a matter of goods movement processes and making it easier to supply NI with certain food products from GB.
The label “Not for EU” on our meat and other products may cause people to wonder about the quality but there really should be no reduction from the standards required under EU regulations.
However, it’s another thread in the strands of the Gordian knot that is the outfall from Brexit and, while no numbers are readily available, it must be having a negative cost impact, to follow the nugatory costs incurred by businesses in developing separate accreditation provisions, before the intention to withdraw from the CE scheme was reversed at the last minute.
