The Potato Scandal – Listen to Tim O’Malley of Nationwide Produce on Beanstalk Global

Great Britain currently exports around 100,000 tonnes of ware potatoes to the Republic of Ireland per year. GB also exports around 40,000t to Northern Ireland. That’s 112 full lorry loads per week. Week in week out – all year round. Unless ware potatoes are granted something called “3rd country equivalence” by the EU, then the trade of potatoes between EU and Ireland & NI will effectively cease on 1st January 2021.

And it gets worse. The UK government see ware potatoes as “food supply chain critical which impacts retail and consumers if supply is restricted”. The UK Gov has agreed to continue to allow ware potatoes from EU to be imported into the UK. So, from 1st January 2021 we will no longer be allowed to export our spuds to the EU or even NI…but we will be allowed to continue to import potatoes from EU. It’s a deplorable failure of politics. Listen to Tim….

UPDATE:

“EU to allow post-Brexit UK farm produce exports”. At the end of December 2020, it was announced that the UK government has told the agricultural industry that the EU will allow almost all food and plant exports from Great Britain to continue after Brexit.

As a first step, the UK has to be awarded “third country” listed status to be allowed to export to the EU. A Defra letter says the EU will confirm this asap with effect from 1 January. This will apply irrespective of a post-Brexit deal. See full details AS PER THIS LINK.

To see the full Broadcast with Tim, just click the picture below.

Filmed 22^nd Dec 2020 with Max MacGillivray of Beanstalk as Host.