The port of Dover, in the south -est of England. – Matt Dunham / AP / SIPA
Brexit risks disrupting the food supply chain and drugs at United Kingdom , despite the free trade agreement signed between London and Brussels, explained the Food Federation and drinks (FDF), this Thursday, fearing delivery delays and price increases.
The FDF recalls that it had asked Boris Johnson for a year so that companies in the sector can prepare for the big leap. In the end, the agreement announced on Christmas Eve only gave them “four working days.”
Storage and diversification of supplies
About 30% of the food consumed in the UK comes from the European Union. In addition, Britain imports almost half of its fresh vegetables and the majority of its fruit. The president of the supermarket chain Tesco, John Allan, wanted to be reassuring on the BBC this weekend: the customs duties being avoided, the increases in administrative costs due to the new formalities will in the end “hardly be felt in the prices “. The agreement also confirms mutual recognition of certifications or inspections with regard to organic products or medicines.
Companies and in particular supermarkets like Tesco have tried to anticipate these disturbances at the border by accumulating stocks, at least for non-perishable foodstuffs, and by studying a diversification of their supply chain, in particular by trying to bypass the port of Dover, which has been congested for weeks. Medicines are not to be outdone: the bilateral agreement signed last week does not completely eliminate uncertainties about “the flow of vital foodstuffs entering the United Kingdom”, notes Mark Dayan, of the think tank Nuffield Trust, in a statement.
Already existing drug shortages
He adds that if the compromise allows “mutual recognition of inspections of pharmaceutical factories and cooperation with customs, the paperwork that will be necessary (…) will be multiplied ”which will complicate and make more expensive the supply of medicines to the NHS, the public health system in the United Kingdom or make these medicines less competitive on the European market. In addition, mutual recognition of essential products like “respirators or masks” is not assured, he argues. The NHS and distributors have since been incited 310 by the British authorities to build up stocks for six weeks, particularly in the event that an agreement has not been reached.
“In case these drugs have a short shelf life, the authorities have also asked companies in the medical sector to ‘ensure that they can transport these drugs by air from and to the European Union,’ said the sector association Royal Pharmaceutical Society in a statement. She adds that the government has secured additional storage warehouses and additional shipping capacity. However, “this still means that a major logistical and legal transition will occur overnight” and in
an “already sensitive context of shortages of generics in recent years , it would be reckless to promise that there will be no problems “.