Heres why it's a Brexit problem. You know this, natch, but you're playing the usual disingenuous schtick.
Chicken out of Poland (sometimes) contains Salmonella Enteriditis and S. Typhimurium. This is a common industry problem. These organisms are harmful. EU law says it's an offence to trade chicken containing these pathogens. They can't be sold there. Until Brexit the UK was covered by EU regs. Now of course we are free from the shackles of EU law, however we haven't get got round to writing our own laws post Brexit. Quote from the UK Food Standard s Agency "The forthcoming laws will protect the UK consumer and maintain the high food standards expected in the UK" . Sadly these laws have yet to be written. Oops.
So pre Brexit, we had laws stopping this. Members of the EU still do, but we've left. Post Brexit, well we had written it, but the dog are it. Big boys came and took it. I left it on the bus.
Interesting. It appears to be the case that the exporter in question, SuperDrob, is sourcing chicken from farms that practice 'preventative' use of antimacrobials of a group which is 'human-critical'. This practice leads to resistant strains of bacteria, particularly but not exclusively E-Coli. Antibiotic resistance is considered to be one of the greatest threats to human health by the WHO and the UN, and all regulatory bodies, including the EU and the FSA, are committed to reducing the use of preventative antimacrobials in the food supply chain.
It appears that issues with this supplier go back at least as far as 2012, and that there were outbreaks of infection both in the UK and across the EU in 2018 and 2020.
You seem to be insinuating in your post that the Polish supplier is not bound by EU production regulations and standards in the case of meat sold for export to third countries, only for that which is destined for EU markets. This is patently untrue, both because they have been supplying the EU market with superbug-infected products, and because factories are bound by EU production regs period. EU standards are committed to a progressive reduction, and I can't establish that the firm has actually broken EU regs, as it claims that it's suppliers are abiding by them, though samples of resistant bacteria have been found in bedding by the FSA as recently as late 2023.
It seems logical to me that the various food standards and the regulatory agencies as well as the supermarkets continue, as they are now, to work together to deal with this issue and to ensure that the supply chain complies with the highest standards from end-to-end. I can see no necessity for there to be checks at the borders - in fact this would be madness, as it would be impossible to test a container load of frozen chicken products in anything remotely related to a timely or effective fashion, and the product would anyway be rendered unsaleable. It is entirely a regulatory and supply-chain issue. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit.
I understand that some standards, particularly in the case of eggs, are higher in the UK than the EU. Buy British.
If you want to buy frozen processed raw chicken products from Asda, Lidl or Iceland, well, good luck to you, but I feel quite certain that those companies are going to go all out to ensure that their reputations don't become ensnared by superbug infected products.
High food standards to not require a quasi-empire. They require sensible and informed regulation across the food supply chain.
