British importers of salad seeds such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, have raised the alarm over the impact of the post-Brexit border regime on imports – and what it could do to next year’s harvest.
Many growers, particularly those producing tomato or pepper crops in the UK, are importing seeds and young plants for the 2025 season at this time of year.
But those in the sector have claimed the government’s new Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), which earlier this year brought tighter border controls on EU plant and animal goods entering the UK, was posing a “critical challenge” to plant and seed imports.
Trade bodies the British Tomato Growers’ Association and the Cucumber & Pepper Growers’ Association said their members were “extremely concerned” about delays at the border, the reported inappropriate levels of biosecurity and plant health maintenance at Border Control Posts (BCPs), and the current seed testing regimes.
The sector claimed that the border checks on seed imports, also known as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) controls, had been causing “significant delays to seed and plants reaching their destinations” since being introduced in April this year. This had caused “major supply chain disruption to the UK protected edibles industry”.
The vast majority of protected salad crops are grown within a glasshouse or permanent polytunnel, and these can include tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, herbs, celery and aubergines.
This was a “crucial time of year for growers to ensure their crop for the next season”, the groups added, so that “supermarket shelves are well stocked with high-quality British produce” come 2025.
The trade associations also claimed “inadequate” checks taking place at BCPs were “jeopardising the health and quality of seeds and plants reaching growers and posing undue additional risks to grower businesses”.
“The checks being carried out at the border are not proportionate to the level of embedded biosecurity already in the protected edible supply chain, and the risks to crops are not being sufficiently mitigated,” they said in a letter.
“We have serious and founded concerns about inadequate biosecurity measures, cross-contamination risk, lack of careful handling and uncontrolled holding conditions.
“The protected edibles supply chain has a very effective, embedded biosecure supply chain from seed producers to propagators to grower nurseries, which is being inherently put at risk by these additional processes, and we have not been reassured that our concerns are being taken seriously.”
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Growers are also worried about testing delays of over six weeks in some cases of batches being sent to the UK, due to plant pathogen testing which they say is already carried out at source. This made crop programming and planning “extremely difficult – thus causing significant negative economic impact, the burden of which is primarily with UK growers”.
“Growers are already working to tight timelines and narrow profitability margins, so this issue is increasing economic pressures on a system that is already hugely challenging, causing enormous risk to individual business viability and the nation’s food supply of these important food crops.”
The current delays and difficulties in getting European seeds through border controls is leading to EU suppliers being less inclined to export to the UK, BTGA and CPGA said in their open letter.
The vegetable growers’ associations said the industry was working with Defra, the Animal & Plant Health Agency and the NFU to resolve the issues, but claimed that “not enough is being done to allay these very real concerns or rapidly develop pragmatic, safe and workable solutions”.
“Seed of European origin is already tested and certified to an equivalent standard as disease-free before being dispatched to GB, making additional testing in the UK an unnecessary, costly and time-consuming duplication,” they wrote.
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“A reciprocal phytosanitary agreement with the EU would mitigate many of these delays,” the groups added.
The Labour government pledged to land a SPS agreement – often referred to as a vet deal – with the EU, which would largely reduce or get rid of some of the current border controls as both sides would accept each other’s biosecurity standards.
This was one of Keir Starmer’s key commitments to reduce border friction and boost trade with Brussels. However, it is unclear at what stage negotiations are at, and when such a deal could come into place.
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