06/02/2021
Like it or not, the shellfish drama (or crisis, if you prefer) isn't going away. If anything, it is serving to define our new relationship with the EU, illustrating on the one hand, how impossibly complex EU law actually is and, on the other how difficult it is dealing with the European Commission now that we are no longer in the EU.
As to the second point, the UK government's George Eustice is about to experience the ultimate in frustration as he prepares to write to the Commission over the issue, expressing his dismay over what
Politics Home (along with the rest of the legacy media) insist on calling a "ban".
We are also told,
pace an e-mail sent to the shellfish industry from the Commission, that this so-called ban has been in law for all third countries for a number of years.
Since then, I have been sent a copy of a letter sent by the Commissioner responsible for food safety, Stella Kyriakides to French MEP Pierre Karleskind, currently chair of the parliament's fishery committee â the very same committee that Farage never attended.
In her letter, Kyriakides reiterates much of what we already know, including the familiar mantra about the EU's determination to ensure "a high level of food safety for European citizens", requiring that live bivalve molluscs must originate from approved and classified production areas.
Bivalve molluscs harvested in more contaminated production areas, Kyriakides writes, are not fit for immediate human consumption. But EU law allows these molluscs be purified to meet EU safety requirements.
While in the EU they can be sent to purification centres in a different Member State than their Member State of origin, and once purified and compliant with food safety requirements, be placed on the EU market, she then asserts.
But, she adds, "it is not allowed that bivalve molluscs harvested in more contaminated production areas in third countries be sent to a Member State for purification prior to their placing on the EU market". According to the Commissioner, "this is due to the risk such bivalve molluscs represent to public health and the difficulty to trace them once imported".
Concluding her letter, she writes that: "Now that the United Kingdom has left the EU, its bivalve molluscs that do not respect EU food safety requirements - such as in the case of bivalve molluscs requiring purification - cannot be imported into the EU, as is the case for any other third country".
Then. to twist the knife, she finished with this flourish: "The EU Commission does not intend to change this rule that contributes to preserving a high level of food safety for European citizens".
However, as I have set out in previous posts, after my intensive trawl of EU legislation, I cannot find any evidence of law which specifically prohibits to import of what are classified Class B molluscs into the EU, for the purpose of purification (known as depuration), before release for human consumption. Furthermore, the Commission has not specified in any detail (or at all) the precise legal base, by which it asserts import is "not allowed".
Despite that, the Commission is claiming that "animal and public health rules for the import into the EU of live bivalve molluscs from third countries are clear and have been elaborated during the last 30 years by the EU Institutions and its Member States".
Yet, not only is this not the case, in the absence of any generic prohibition, there is a country-specific instrument implementing a ban. This is the case with Turkey, an immediate neighbour of the EU and easily in a position to supply molluscs to the EU market.
Prior to August 2013, Turkey was listed in Annex I to Commission Decision 2006/766/EC establishing the list of third countries from which "imports of live, chilled, frozen or processed" molluscs were permitted, under the same basic law that is still in force to this day. And, at the end of September 2012, there were 9 Class A, 9 Class B and 4 Class C areas.
Only in July 2013 did the Commission issued
Implementing Regulation (EU) No 743/2013 (part illustrated above), which states: "Member States shall not allow importation into the Union of live and chilled bivalve molluscs from Turkey" (Article 2). That is what a real "ban" looks like.
Needless to say, there is no equivalent to Article 2 in the
Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/1770, applicable to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, authorising the introduction into the Union of bivalve molluscs, etc., for human consumption.
In respect of the Turkish "ban", there is a logical inconsistency. If export of live and chilled bivalve molluscs to the EU from listed countries was not implicitly permitted (for all classes), it would not be necessary to promulgate an explicit ban. Simple logic says that you do not bother to ban something which is already not permitted.
Furthermore, there is another inconsistency. While Commissioner Kyriakides says that the EU Commission does not intend to change its "rule" with regard to the UK, that is not the case with Turkey. The ban imposed on Turkish imports, according to the Regulation, applies only until 31 December 2021.
What is doubly interesting about the Kyriakides letter, though, is the use of the weasel word "allowed" in respect of the purported UK ban. She does not say, explicitly, that UK (or any third country) imports are prohibited. She says they are not allowed.
Here, we can refer to
Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 which sets out the specific conditions for import (Article 6) and a provision (Article 7) that "certificates or other documents accompany consignments of products", which â if established â may be "model documents".
And there, as we have previously indicated, lies the problem. There is a "model document established, by virtue of
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/628, which apparently makes no provision for the import of products from Class B areas, for depuration in EU territory.
What is does say on the form, though, is that the colour of the stamp and the signature "must be different to that of the other particulars of the certificate", a general requirement of which some exporters have fallen foul, complaining of "red tape", having missed the instruction on the certificate.
But, in another twist to the sage, my industry contact tells me that the form is not being accepted even for products which have undergone depuration in the UK. The problem is that depuration does not turn Class B products into Class A. Technically, the classification applies to the production area.
Thus, despite products meeting microbiological criteria for immediate consumption, any product with a Class B label is being rejected. My contact blames "undertrained customs officers and temporary vets", who are "not cutting the mustard". But this doesn't help an industry where the bulk of molluscs produced are in Class B.
And, to add insult to injury, we learn that the Commission has Northern Ireland as part of the same epidemiological area as the rest of the EU and will be permitted to export live molluscs to the EU under the pre-1 January 2021 conditions.
It would be hard to find a better example to illustrate that the Commission is playing games. But, for all that, the
Telegraph has the answer: we should all organise "British seafood suppers".
Translated literally, with unpurified Class B products, that would mean eating our own shit, of which the Commission would, no doubt, heartily approve.
Also published on
Turbulent Times.
