Saturday, 16 December 2023

Food Labelling - Not for EU

The issue of product labelling as set out in the Windsor Framework is coming up again and in a big way. If you remember, Rishi Sunak agreed that food products which might end up in Northern Ireland as part of the ‘improvements’ to the original NI Protocol should carry a label with the message "Not for EU." The WF is effectively an updated version of the NIP first agreed in 2019. I have posted several times on this topic (HERE and HERE), including about what a problem this would be for manufacturers who often don’t know the final destination of products at the point of manufacture.

Now the food manufacturers are sounding the alarm and saying the labelling will be “absolutely cataclysmic for food exporters.” This is the claim made by Sean Ramsden, director of the Food and Drink Exporters Association and the CEO of food export business Ramsden International.

He said: “A lot of manufacturers will probably just give up on the European market. It seems an inconsequential thing to say ‘put it onto the packaging,’ but in practice, it means changing production runs. Manufacturers are saying this is crazy because they don’t want to start doing additional production runs.”

I’m not convinced he’s right about doing additional production runs because I think it would mostly involve changing labels part way through. This isn’t unusual, packaging lines are often quite complex with different products (clean down between changes), pack sizes (adjustments, change parts) and so on. Changing labels is not that difficult but it is an added cost.

I think the problem is more that in addition to all the different products and formats the manufacturer now needs two different versions of all the different labels. They are essentially doubling the number of different label types they need to order and stock.

A small number of products intended for NI would have needed to be labelled “Not for EU”. But then, in an attempt to placate the DUP and kid them they are not being treated differently, the government decreed that from October 2024 all meat and dairy products products sold anywhere in the UK would need to be labelled Not for EU.  From October 2025 this applies to all food products.

So now, only a small number of products will NOT need to be labelled “Not for EU.” They are the ones of the portion of the maker's output that goes into the EU.

I assume that for most suppliers this means labels which go on the smallest individual pack and will produce two types of stock, EU and UK, which are no longer interchangeable. If you run out of products labelled Not for EU, you can’t then use the unlabelled stock.

Applying new labels just before shipment isn’t practical for most producers because this might mean depalletising everything and running the stock either through a separate labelling line or using the existing one, preventing it from being used for normal production. Either way, it's more costly.

With some products, it may not be feasible at all. 

Whichever way you look at it there are problems and some companies may choose to abandon the smaller market altogether. I can easily see that happening.

The government has made a series of short-term decisions to solve a Brexit-related difficulty without thinking it through, consulting with those affected or appreciating the consequences, and just continuing to compound the difficulties.

Perhaps more importantly from the customer's point of view, what does it look like seeing "Not for EU" on foodstuff sitting on supermarket shelves? The products themselves will almost certainly meet EU quality standards but it won't seem like it. Crazy!

Mark Meadows

Most people won't appreciate who Mark Meadows is. He was Donald Trump's last Chief of Staff and came in after John Kelly left in 2020.  He's a very right-wing Republican and was a congressman before working at the White House.

A breaking story in the US involving a binder of highly secret documents about an FBI investigation code-named "Crossfire Hurricane" that appears to have gone missing after Trump left the White House on 20 January 2021, looks like a big problem for the former POTUS and Mr Meadows.

The binder was about 25cm (10”) thick and contained raw intelligence on Russian interference in the US 2020 presidential election. The binder was in the safe in the WH office of Meadows in the last few frantic days as the Trump administration was trying to get the whole thing declassified and published to ‘prove’ the Russians hadn’t helped Trump win in 2016 (they had). There was a lot of toing and froing to redact names and methods to protect sources.

An eye witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked for Meadows now claims to have seen him getting into a car on 2 January at the WH with the binder, although his lawyer denies he’s got it.

Now the New York Times has corroborated all that and has more info including a video of Trump confirming Meadows has got it.

It's hard to imagine Trump and Meadows getting any deeper in trouble but if anything, this has the potential to do it.

Two Georgia election workers were awarded a staggering total of $148 million yesterday in a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani Trump's former lawyer and Mayor of New York from 2994 to 2001. As plenty of commentators have pointed out, Trump always manages to get his supporters under one bus or another, while surviving himself.

But time is running out for him.

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