A logistics company boss has claimed a load of vegetarian burgers was rejected during a protocol check in Belfast because of how a Spanish vet had written the letter ‘i’.
eter Summerton, the managing director of McCulla Transport in Lisburn, said the incident was one example of how his business was facing “stifling bureaucracy" as a result of the NI Protocol.
He said it had added significant costs to his business, as well as delays.
Mr Summerton said the rejection of 60 cases of ‘beanie burgers’, with 48 packs in each case, had resulted in a delay of a week.
That affected not just the burgers, which were being sent by a wholesaler in Britain for a customer in the food service industry, but other items in the truck.
While the burgers were mainly plant-based, they required veterinary health certificates because they contained cheese and egg.
The certificates are a requirement of the EU for animal-based products and applied to the burgers because they were for a foodservice customer, rather than for supermarket retail.
He said: “We are not a pro-Brexit organisation and never were. However, the stifling bureaucracy that is created by the protocol is staggering. Last week on a 10-page health cert, we had a Spanish vet certifying an Italian product, which were beanie burgers.
"The packing centre code for it starts with an ‘IT’. But he drew his ‘i’ like a slightly upside down ‘v’, because that's how you form your ‘i’ in the region of Spain that he’s from.
"Everything else on the health cert was fine but that product was returned to Great Britain and the vet was asked to reissue that health certificate again.
“I have a health cert from two weeks previously from the same vet forming his ‘i’ in the same way and they let the product into the country.
“These are trained vets and the people signing these are highly qualified. But things are being returned because they don’t like the shape of your ‘i’. Inherently, there was nothing at all wrong with the product.”
DEARA said it was “aware of the issue raised by Mr Summerton and the circumstances pertinent to the issue are currently being investigated”.
McCulla Transport moves chilled goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic, between the Republic and Britain, and between Northern Ireland and Britain.
“We’re the ham in the sandwich in the middle of the arrangements,” Mr Summerton said.
He said he regarded the protocol in a “depoliticised” way and that goods being sent from Britain to Northern Ireland should be treated the same way as goods travelling from the Republic to Britain.
“We move lots of goods from the Republic to Britain, and effectively those goods are green-laned and are not subject to any checks.”
He said that goods from Britain to NI should not be subject to checks which are not in place for goods going from the Republic to Britain.
Goods can pass into Britain from the Republic because the UK Government has chosen not to carry out checks on goods from the EU.
However, with the protocol, Northern Ireland is treated as being within the EU single market, so EU checks apply on goods at what is described as the Irish Sea border.
Mr Summerton said a simpler solution should apply. “We have operated the Common Travel Area, and by operating that, people can travel freely between these islands, such is the integration among these islands outside the European structures. We need a more bespoke arrangement like that for goods.”
He said, when fully implemented, the protocol would affect the flow of goods into NI from GB so that goods were subject to the same checks now applying on goods from GB going into the Republic.
But for now, arrangements known as grace periods or easements, mean that a lot of the rules of the protocol do not apply to supermarkets transporting goods into Northern Ireland.
Mr Summerton said that had created a “two-tier protocol” for other markets such as foodservice.
He said: “Anyone who comes into my premises and signs an NDA can see what I’m invoicing every month and what the true costs of Brexit in the Republic are and the true costs of the protocol are in the north.
"We can’t hide it because we’ve been invoicing customers for it now for 18 months.”
He refused to comment on whether he supported the NI Protocol Bill.
“Everybody runs to the politics as that’s the exciting bit that gets everybody into their corners, but logistics isn’t about emotions,” he said.
