The effects of no deal on brown meat

...could be disastrous, warns the National Farmers' Union (NFU)  in today's Guranida. Brown and grey meat refers to all the offal and other stuff the Europeans like, apparently. British diners are 'too fussy' to eat this stuff, so we send lots of it to Europe.

The story says

the UK faces a six-month wait to be certified as an approved third-country supplier....The NFU says it has been told informally that although Britain is in complete regulatory alignment with the EU, if there is no deal, the same health checks countries such as China and the US undergo will apply to UK suppliers.'. 

The checks will be undertaken by British bodies, subject to EU checking. 6000 meat-processing establishments will have to be checked, and the checks will extend to exports of 'bottled water, honey, jam, dairy and other fresh foods.'

The source of this 'advice' is not entirely clear, although UK and EU authorities have been consulted.

The NFU says it has established through its conversations that Defra already has huge teams working on a plan of action to audit farms and processing plants. However, legally they cannot submit that plan until 30 March 2019, when the UK has left the EU.

Each stage could take 3 months meaning a 6 month period of no exports to the EU. What on earth will the Europeans do without British offal? There should be no impediment really, of course, because UK farms are already aligned to EU regs, but it is a legal matter (ie to be decided by pedants). There is worse news, since Calais has no checking facilities, so exports will have to be rerouted to ports like Zeebrugge. I bet the citizens of Calais will be pleased.

Oh calamity. Let's call the whole thing off to protect UK offal!

Hang on though. British processing plants are already compliant so the checking shouldn't take too long should it? Why would the whole thing would have to be done all over again from scratch? Does the EU do this to all third countries that export agricultural produce to it? If there are 6000 plants in the UK,how many in other countries? It seems the EU imports agricultural materials from the USA, Brazil, Norway and China, the last two exporting fish. Close inspection of all these plants would be quite a task.

The EU might get nasty just with the UK. DEFRA 'could not “be certain of the EU response or timing” for an application. Without this “no deal could take place”.'. So it's a bargaining ploy again?

At least the British BLT sandwich is safe, it seems,after an old buffer appeared on Newsnight to warn us that Dutch and Spanish tomatoes would all go off waiting in the queues for imports at Dover:

The UK government has plans in place to keep imports up by allowing goods to enter without checks to Britain and with tariffs reduced to keep food inflation below 5%.

Maybe we should ban all EU imports of tomatoes until the UK has had the chance to inspect every greenhouse in Holland and every smallholding in Spain to make sure the tomatoes are grown according to British standards.Not to be nasty, petty or pedantic, you understand -- it's a legal matter.