EU and UK Complete Deal to Remove Brexit Checks on Food and Animal Products
The European Union and the United Kingdom have completed a deal to remove Brexit checks on imports and exports of food and animal products, according to the Guardian. The changes are not expected to take effect until the first quarter of 2028.
The checks were introduced in 2022 and apply to food and animal products moving between Britain and the EU. They are part of a wider set of rules known as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules, which cover food safety and animal and plant health.
The agreed text runs to about 200 pages and covers post-Brexit food exports. It has been settled and will face no further negotiation. It will be presented to EU ambassadors, the envoys who represent member states in Brussels, at a meeting on Wednesday. Ambassadors will discuss a joint statement that Andy Burnham and EU leaders are due to issue on 20 November, the date of the second EU-UK summit.
That summit had been delayed by six months after a change of UK prime minister.
Implementation is expected to take longer than the agreement itself. Defra, the UK government department for food and farming, has briefed industry leaders that the SPS deal may not be implemented until 2028. Products such as grains grown with fungicides, the chemicals used to control crop disease, that are not yet approved in the EU would get a further six-month transition period. The delay is linked to the UK's need to bring British food standards law into line with EU law over time.
Under the proposed framework, retailers in Northern Ireland would no longer have to label products "not for the EU".
The pressure to act is rooted in trade losses. The National Farmers' Union said British food exports to the EU had fallen by a third since Brexit, with eggs, chicken and potato products the worst hit.
The deal builds on earlier steps. In May 2025, Britain and the EU agreed to trade with far less paperwork and fewer border checks on plant and animal products. The SPS agreement was largely agreed in May 2026, and the government published it so that food producers would have time to prepare. The government has said the agreement is intended to reduce administrative requirements for UK seafood exports.
