But the efficiency makes it fragile. The impact of no-deal Brexit on this system would be an implosion in the trade network. Suddenly, the full certification system would need to be checked at the border. Frictionless trade would be replaced by standard-issue bureaucracy.
This is where the crunch point will be. The main ports affected will be the ones at Dover, Calais, the Eurotunnel, Dunkirk, and Holyhead, for trade to and from Ireland.
Products of animal origin from non-EU states must pass through special border inspection posts, manned by a vet. Calais and the Eurotunnel are not equipped for this. Dunkirk is, but it has a very low capacity.
We have a very significant infrastructure problem here. We don't have enough inspection posts, we don't have the staff to man them, we don't have the means to divert product to them and we don't have the cold storage capacity to handle product going in and out. Many ports don't have space to install more facilities.
Inspections take time. Where a product must be detained and a sample taken off for testing, the process can last around 36 hours.
It is fatal.
A study by an expert on traffic modelling from Imperial College London earlier this year found that if the current average paperwork clearance of two minutes at Dover was increased to just four, there would be a 20-mile tailback within 24 hours on the UK side. This would balloon as the days wore on.
It doesn't really matter which side the tailbacks start on - European or British. One side affects the other because there is limited space for goods to move. Some experts predict a total breakdown of the Just In Time system by day five. That's where the horror stories you read about stockpiling come from. Very quickly, we'd see empty supermarket shelves.
At this point, Downing Street could decide to unilaterally give up all these tests and procedures for goods coming into the UK. After all, it is now unbound from EU law. It can do what it likes.
There is some evidence that this is what ministers are planning. In February, Defra minister George Eustice told a Lords committee his department would implement a 'mutual recognition' regime, which ultimately amounts to assuming food from the EU was safe to eat and hoping they did the same. Transport secretary Chris Grayling told the BBC categorically in March that "we will not impose checks" at the port of Dover.
But this approach would have profound consequences. Overnight, there would be no protections whatsoever for UK consumers on the food they eat.
This would be a betrayal of ministers' assurances of high food standards after Brexit, but put aside the morality and think about the practicality. Opening the border in this way would provide an open invitation for fraudsters. They could send anything to the UK they like - any food product, any drink, with any ingredient - knowing there would be no checks. The spot check system operating under EU law would vanish. There would be no documentation, no safeguards, no court oversight, and no supervision.
The UK would be instantly downgraded to pariah status by the EU and the rest of our trading partners. British food exports would shrivel up.
The other solution would be to turn away from the continent and start importing our food from across the Atlantic.
The problem with this idea is the existence of geography. The EU is not our main food supplier because of some metropolitan conspiracy by people who like brie. It's our main food supplier because it is close to us. The US, regardless of its 'Anglophone' cultural credentials, is further away. US exports to the UK are proportionately tiny. They are ranked 10th, behind a host of European countries. For America to replace this volume of trade flow in nine months is simply not realistic. No-one with any understanding of the industry thinks it is possible.
But ministers like Liam Fox will likely demand this anyway - not because it makes sense, but because it provides them with a historic and irreversible opportunity to break Britain away from the continent and towards the US.
This is because of something called 'sanitary and phytosanitary standards'. These are global measures to protect people, animals and the environment from diseases. The EU has one approach to these and the US has another.
Years ago Nasa developed something called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). It was an extremely systematic approach to guaranteeing quality control on foods, primarily for the reason that it is very, very problematic if an astronaut gets diarrhoea. The EU adopted this very high standard in 2006.
The US, on the other hand, has much lower standards. The EU rejects US standards on the levels of pesticides residue in fruit, for instance, hormone injections in beef and chlorine wash for poultry. It has strict and very welcome requirements on the excess and routine use of antimicrobials in agriculture. Anyone who has had their life saved by antibiotics will recognise why this is sensible long-term rule-making.
Brexiters pretend post-Brexit Britain will forge its own standards in trade, but that is false. We're a medium-sized country surrounded on both sides by massive trading entities. The reality is we'll either snuggle into the EU ecosystem or the US ecosystem - it's as simple as that. On food, this is basically about which set of sanitary and phytosanitary standards we adopt.
If Brexiters can force a situation - especially in the chaotic furnace of no-deal - where the UK starts de-facto accepting US standards by having to bring in lots of their food, it makes it harder for us to align with the EU again in the future. It's a fait accompli, except that Fox would consider that phrase unforgivably continental. Maybe he'd prefer Mission Accomplished.
As the days and weeks wore on after a no-deal Brexit, British agriculture would be pulverised.
Tariffs are exorbitantly high for food products. Under a deal, they'd be kept at zero, but without one they'll average 22%. This would devastate UK agricultural exports, whose main market is Europe.
Britain could decide to unilaterally bring these tariffs down to zero. But you can't discriminate between countries under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, so it would then have to do this for the rest of the world as well. That would bring in a flood of cheaper agricultural products from countries with lower standards and protections.
Food prices would come down for some consumers. This would force domestic British agriculture consumption into a death spiral. They'd be blocked from exporting to their largest foreign market and suddenly faced with impossible competition at home.
Alternately, the UK could try to move past the immediate chaos of no-deal, pull itself together, and level-up capacity so it could get the certification system demanded by the EU up and running. But here it runs into another problem, which feels disturbingly like the twist at the end of a morality tale: there aren’t enough vets, because they're all from the EU.
British vets like setting up small clinics in a village somewhere and saving the family dog. Admit it. That's the image in your head when someone says the word 'vet'. They do not envision spending their career watching cow carcasses being washed down in an abattoir. The culture of veterinary checks in food is much more common in Europe, especially in Spain. EU citizens consequently make up 95% of the veterinary workforce in UK food production.
If Britain is going to suddenly have to do all these checks to export food to the EU, it will require a massive increase in these types of vets. But at the moment we can't even keep the ones we've got. European workers are leaving, sick of the lack of security about their status and a national conversation which only ever treats them as a problem. We lose about 20 EU vets a month from the sector.
continued on next post...