Brussels bureaucrats are still imposing rules on the UK’s food and drink manufacturers with shoppers paying the cost at the checkout.
The red tape, eight years after the nation voted for Brexit, is part of an agreement between the UK and EU designed to end rows over Northern Ireland. But the Food and Drink Federation, which represents more than 1,000 businesses, has written to Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker warning the cost to the industry “is likely to run into hundreds of millions of pounds.”
It said in the letter: “These costs, coming at a time when manufacturers are already absorbing input cost inflation, will inevitably feed into higher food and drink prices for consumers across the UK – putting further pressure on hard-pressed households.”
Federation members include household names such as Birds Eye and Nestle as well as hundreds of smaller firms.
The labelling rules are a result of the Windsor Framework, an agreement to ensure there is no need for border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Some products manufactured in England, Scotland or Wales and due to be sold in Northern Ireland have required a label stating they are “not for EU” since October last year.
This year the scheme will be extended to apply to products sold in any part of the UK and the items affected are determined by EU rules – which Brussels has the power to change.
For example, the EU decided earlier this year that products containing seasoning and rice from India, or Thai chilli peppers, will require labelling unless manufacturers confirm that the ingredients came from an EU-approved producer. Meanwhile, breakfast cereals and chocolate spreads were recently removed from the products affected.
Manufacturers say they will be forced to re-label products every time EU and UK food law diverges. They are urging the Government to scrap plans to impose the rules on goods that never leave the UK mainland.
In the letter to Mr Barker, seen by the Sunday Express, Food and Drink Federation chief executive Karen Betts said: “Food and drink manufacturers are struggling to understand why, having left the EU, the UK would want to make its food labelling regime subject to the EU’s list of controlled products.
“The products on this list vary regularly (for example, breakfast cereals and chocolate spreads have recently been removed), and the list is compiled for reasons of internal EU food safety, with no reference to the UK.
“But under the government’s proposals, every time the EU changes its rules – which it does frequently – UK and overseas food manufacturers could have to relabel food and drink for UK consumers.”
