Tomato, cucumber and pepper growers have issued an open letter to the government, highlighting the issues that post-Brexit checks on imported plants and fresh produce are having, and warning there could be significant issues for UK salad production next year.
‘The next eight weeks is a short, but critical window in the UK Protected Edibles calendar, with growers importing seeds and/or young plants into the UK in preparation for next season’s crop, ensuring supermarket shelves are well stocked with high quality British produce in 2025,’ the letter began.
British Protected Edibles Growers say they are extremely concerned about the new BTOM checking and testing regimes at the UK border, brought in earlier this year, which are already causing significant delays to seed and plants reaching their destinations, and rather than re-assure, raise serious alarms around plant health and biosecurity.
‘The phytosanitary measures already taken in the protected edible cropping supply chain are exceptional, but we believe these measures will and are being compromised through the checks taking place at border control points (BCP’s), jeopardising the health and quality of seeds and plants reaching growers and posing undue additional risks to grower businesses,’ the sector warned. ‘Whilst as an industry we are working with partners including the NFU, Defra, APHA to resolve this, and productive conversations are being had, not enough is being done to allay these very real concerns or rapidly develop pragmatic, safe and workable solutions. 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.’
Seed houses have reported testing delays of over six weeks in some cases of batches being sent to the UK, primarily caused by the turnround times for additional plant pathogen testing (already carried out at source), which makes crop programming and planning extremely difficult. Growers point out that 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.
More worryingly, the crop associations warned, ‘There is evidence that due to these delays and difficulties getting seed through border controls, European seed suppliers are less inclined to dispatch to the UK. This particularly applies to essential early multiplication of new virus resistant varieties, which will limit industry progress in varietal innovation, especially regarding addressing key disease concerns such as Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus (ToBRFV). Large proportions of small batches of new virus resistance seed is being destructively tested at the border, making sending trial batches of this seed to the UK economically unviable.’
The sector urged Defra, PHSI and APHA to work with growers to rapidly and appropriate resolve the issues and called for an agreement that young, protected edibles plants (especially tomatoes and pepper crops) would not be tested at Border Control Points, but only at a phytosanitary secure, grower site or at registered Control Points that are adequately set up to meet the unique biosecurity and crop management needs of these crops.
