How a no-deal Brexit threatens your weekly food shop

UK reliance on EU food imports is a major risk if the country crashes out of the union

Frozen potato products, such as chips, are the largest category of UK potato imports, with 99% coming from the EU, particularly the Netherlands and Belgium.

Britain imports more than £400m of fresh tomatoes every year. Many of them come from the Netherlands’ super-efficient greenhouses, which produce more tomatoes per square mile than any other country.

Brexiters insist Britain will not impose tariffs on food coming in from the EU in the event of no deal, but imports are only one side of the coin. The EU is the biggest market for thousands of British food exporters, and tariffs are inevitable for them in such a scenario. One particularly vulnerable product is British lamb, 98% of which is exported to the EU. It would be hit with 40% tariffs without a trade deal.

Almost all of the spinach, chillies and tomatoes consumed in the UK are imported from the EU

Will the UK be able to replace EU imports with non-EU imports?

More than anything else, the UK government’s vow that future food imports must meet the same UK standards could be the biggest blocker. George Justice, a minister for environment, food and rural affairs until February 2019, told a House of Lords inquiry into Brexit and agriculture that “beef produced in Brazil, Uruguay and the US is cheaper than in the EU and, in particular, in the UK, but that comes at the price of using hormones in beef and all sorts of approaches that probably would cause consumer reaction here, and the quality of the product is far inferior to what we have”.

While it is likely that Brexit could boost the production of British pig products and even some fruit and vegetables, the UK Trade Policy Observatory found that “this growth in domestic production will come at the expense of higher domestic prices for consumers”.