Harnessing technology to unblock the challenges of implementing a UK-EU Veterinary Agreement

In June last year, the Labour Party pledged in its manifesto to “negotiate a veterinary agreement to prevent unnecessary border checks“.

Last week’s UK-EU deal builds on that promise, stating that “the vast majority of routine border checks on animal and plant shipments to and from the EU will be dropped”.

The proposed agreement is part of a broader strategy to ‘reset’ the UK’s relationship with the EU, aiming for closer alignment than the previous government’s approach. This strategy seeks to drive economic growth, partly through increased trade exports, while ensuring the biosecurity of UK borders remains uncompromised.

According to The State of the Border 2024 report, UK businesses have adapted more significantly to the post-Brexit trading environment than their French and German counterparts, likely due to more acute needs.

The opportunity is substantial: in 2023, 60% of the UK’s total food, feed and drink exports went to the EU, totalling £14 billion. Research from Aston Business School suggests a veterinary agreement could boost these exports by 22.5%, and imports by 5.6%. The UK government estimates the SPS deal combined with Emissions Trading Systems linking measures alone could contribute up to £9 billion to the UK economy by 2040.

Strengthening Trade Ties: The Role of a Veterinary Agreement

To understand the significance of a veterinary agreement in the UK’s evolving trade relationship with the EU, it is helpful to briefly recap the context.

Before Brexit, the UK was included in the single market and customs union, ensuring the free movement of goods and services in exchange for full alignment with EU trade regulations.

Currently, UK-EU trade relations are governed by the Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA), which includes the Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland. The Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) outlines how increased Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) checks apply to imports, including identity and physical checks for all live animals entering Great Britain from the EU starting in late 2024.

Currently, the physical check rates for products entering the EU from the UK are:

• 100% for live animals,
• 30% for poultry meat and dairy products, and
• 1% for hay and straw.

These SPS customs procedures have created several challenges for importers and exporters, including:

• Increased layers of time-consuming customs declaration paperwork.
• Costly delays at Border Control Posts (BCPs) when subject to physical SPS checks, sometimes leading to spoilage of perishable agri-food products.
• Shortages of registered vets to conduct and certify physical SPS checks.
• Inconsistent outcomes across different BCPs, resulting in consignments being returned destroyed due to non-compliance.
• Difficulty finding hauliers and transport companies willing to deliver to the EU due to poor experiences at BCPs.
• Reduced shelf life of perishable products, leading to a lower quality product for vendors and customers alike.
• Additional costs absorbed within the supply chain due to non-value-adding paperwork.

As highlighted in The State of the Border 2024 report, these issues stem from resource shortages, outdated technology and inefficient processes. The UK has also lost access to key EU databases used to monitor disease outbreaks which complicates the UK’s ability to respond quickly to emerging threats and coordinate with EU partners. 

The lack of a veterinary agreement, along with the checks imposed following Brexit, has had a detrimental impact on animal health and welfare, data sharing between the UK and EU, and disease surveillance. A veterinary agreement could address these challenges by reducing unnecessary border checks through the alignment, harmonisation or mutual recognition of SPS certification between the UK and EU. 

Dynamic Alignment: A Proven Model

Last week’s UK-EU deal introduces “dynamic alignment”, where the UK will automatically follow EU regulations on plant and animal products.  This model is not new. For example, dynamic alignment between the EU and Switzerland (a non-EU member state), allows free movement of agri-food products based on the principle of mutual recognition of animal health and welfare measures. Under this agreement Switzerland is included in the EU’s common veterinary area, eliminating the need for border controls on products of animal origin. Consignments from rest of the world entering via Switzerland are controlled on entry into the CH-EU Common Veterinary Area and inspections are carried out in designated inspection posts, after which commodities can be freely traded.

Dynamic alignment would involve the UK adopting EU regulations for animal health and welfare standards and automatically incorporate future legislative changes. 

Furthermore, in the context of Northern Ireland (NI), if the NI and the rest of the UK follow the same EU agri-food rules, checks and regulatory paperwork currently required would no longer be necessary.

Digital, Data, and Operational Challenges

From a digital, data and operations perspective, the challenge lies in streamlining services to interconnect seamlessly with EU systems.  For example, UK exporters of live animals would need to use UK systems to register and provide information which then link into EU managed services.  This cross-border data exchange presents challenges in maintaining data integrity. Standardising processes across the UK-EU border is particularly difficult, as it falls outside of the UK’s delivery remit – even after negotiations. Achieving this would require a close working relationship with the EU underpinned by a stronger alignment in standardisation, governance and interoperability across UK and EU trade services and systems. 

The success of this model depends on the trust, assurance and ability of both parties to monitor, and mitigate disease risks through disease surveillance, data sharing and intelligence-led interventions. The main sticking points will be the readiness of the authorities on both sides of the border and their willingness to share information, and, to an extent, how trust can be built on assurance. Implementing a required trust and assurance model powered by capabilities such as end-to-end traceability, digitisation and automation will greatly benefit from recent technology advancements in AI, agentic AI, graph and blockchain. However, these solutions require access to standardised and shareable data.

Looking Ahead

Regardless of the agreement’s final form, the goal remains the freer movement of agri-food commodities including, live animals and plants without compromising biosecurity. Trade arrangements like those of Switzerland and New Zealand, with the latter following a regulatory equivalence model, have proven to reduce checks on animal products to 2% and 1% respectively. Alongside the benefits this freer-flowing trade could provide for the UK, significant challenges remain, including:

• Maintaining biosecurity standards as imports increase and inspection rates decrease.
• Integrating and maintaining the UK’s current border processes and systems with EU.
• Managing spend and remaining cost effective – based on the National Audit Office report in May 2024, the three main departments with responsibility for managing the border forecasted to spend around £4.7 billion on the 13 most significant border-related programmes required in the context of European Union (EU) exit and improving the performance of the border over the lifetime of the programmes.
• End-to-end traceability of products of animal origin (POAO) entering the UK from the US and the rest of the world, including their by-products destined for the EU

The way the UK adapts to these challenges will have significant impacts across people, IT and processes for a broad range of associated stakeholders, from government regulatory bodies, to traders, producers and consumers.

The government’s role in harnessing technology to address these challenges is critical.  Two key, interconnected capabilities where technology can make a difference are:

1. Traceability: enhancing biosecurity through better tracking of the agri-food ecosystem.
2. End-to-end Digitisation and Automation: streamlining SPS certification and check procedures.

In the second part of this blog, we will explore how technology can enhance these capabilities and explore their implications in greater detail.  We will share our next article here and on LinkedIn: do feel free to follow Debadutt Goswami on LinkedIn to catch the next part of this series as soon as it’s live.