Export Health Certificates: Veterinary Medicine

(asked on 11th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of a shortage of vets for signing export health certificates on UK meat and dairy exports to the EU after the transition period.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 21st December 2020

We are working hard to increase the number of Official Veterinarians to meet demand for certification post transition period, to ensure that the food industry can take advantage of the opportunities and changes that the UK’s new chapter will bring. There are a range of challenges in estimating the number of OVs that will be needed but, based on our modelling of a central scenario, we expect numbers to be sufficient.

The number of Official Veterinarians qualified to sign Export Health Certificates (EHCs) for animal products has grown from approximately 600 to approximately 1300 since February 2019. The training required has been available free of charge since October 2020 and 468 vets are currently enrolled on the relevant training course via this scheme. In addition to this we are providing funding for surge capacity veterinarians as short-term support for the end of the transition period should localised shortages arise.

We have put in place a range of mitigations to simplify processes, including the development of EHC Online and the launch of the Groupage Export Facilitation Scheme for products packaged for the final consumer from stable supply chains.

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