British lamb and beef worth up to £1million in exports has been held up at the French border in an extraordinary stand-off.
Vets at Calais have suddenly began stopping entire lorry-loads of the UK meat after finding specks of wool said to amount to the size of ‘less than a halfpenny piece’.
The French inspectors of the British produce heading for Europeans’ tables over Christmas have designated the presence of this as ‘contamination’ and impounded up to eight lorries, pending destruction.
Even though Britain’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) had deemed the meat – primarily lamb – as fit for human consumption, French officials were on Wednesday not even allowing the lorries to return home.
As a result, entire loads – amounting to as many as 1,200 lamb carcasses on a single refrigerated lorry, worth up to £120,000 – could become unusable, even if not destroyed.
The main victim of the hold-up complained that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had failed to step in to try to resolve the issue.
Four of the affected lorries are full of the produce of West Scottish Lamb abattoir, based at Carlisle in Cumbria.
David Burton, the company’s joint owner, said their first lorry was stopped three weeks ago – and if the situation continued, up to 100 jobs could go at his firm.
He added: ‘There’s due to be a realignment of rules between Britain and Europe, with checks at Calais stopping – but the opposite has happened, with checks being upped.
‘That meant that a consignment of lamb going to Belgium was stopped at Calais after going through the tunnel on the train. They wouldn’t let it through after finding wool.
‘That had not been considered a problem for 30 years.
‘That first load is still in Calais three weeks on. We double-checked another load going to Belgium the next week, with a team of Food Standards Agency inspectors working on it.
‘But when it arrived in Calais, the French inspectors found a very small piece of wool, I’m talking less than a halfpenny piece, and wouldn’t let it through. It has since happened to two more of our consignments, one at Caen in Normandy.
‘When the truck drivers send me pictures of the wool, they warn I won’t even be able to see it.’
Mr Burton went on: ‘I know of four other abattoirs and meat exporters in England and Scotland who have had loads stopped – most lamb but one beef – because of a single hair found in a vacuum pack.
‘Lamb export is 80 per cent of our business and we employ close to 100 people. But if we get another load stopped, we’ll have to stop exporting.
‘I’ve spent three weeks talking to the FSA and Defra, but I have had no support whatsoever.
‘We’ve given the French the power to control our goods.’
Sivep, the French veterinary border inspection agency, had not responded last night to requests to provide an explanation.
A spokesman for the Government said: ’We are working closely with French authorities and the companies involved to resolve this situation immediately.’
He added that such inspections should come to an end thanks to a forthcoming relaxation of post-Brexit food standards rules.
In future, inspections should be carried out by FSA staff in Britain and not repeated in France.
The spokesman added: ‘We are negotiating a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement that will boost food trade and remove border checks while protecting our collective biosecurity.’
The Daily Mail understands that there are ongoing talks between Britain and France’s leading veterinary officers to allow for the disputed lorry loads of meat to return to England before they exceed time limits.
