Not the new rules that are agreed are the real problem.
Both the EU and the UK have all kinds of different rules and regulations with all kinds of countries all over the world.
But they are all implemented step by step over a long periods of time.
It is the short transition period, that completely was used to kick the can as long as possible down the road instead of agree on rules and implement the ones that are agreed, that resulted in these bottlenecks.
The transition period should have been extended at least one or two years after the Christmas Eve agreement, to get facilities in place, train new needed staff, run trails, inform the people involved.
But as always, it takes two to tango.
HMG was not interested.
It is never about the common people. They only want high quality fresh food for reasonable prices.
The magic words here are trust and economy.
Trust between countries, or better the lack of it, and attempts to find possibillities to make an extra €,$ or £ .
The UK seems to have been frustrated about the EU hindering their economic chances during their membership.
The EU seems to be afraid that the UK will attempt to undercut the market and flood the EU with products they don't agree with.
I understand why both the EU and the UK would want to perform careful checks on goods arriving from particular countries, where different product standards apply.
However, when you know that the same standards do, in practice, apply, and when you're dealing with established and trusted supply chains (as you are with the big supermarkets) then I don't see what the practical need is for the checks, since the supermarkets' buyers and QA testers can be trusted to do at least as thorough a job as HM Customs, not least because they face civil and criminal prosecution if they don't.
So I don't see that the customer is being protected here, and nor do I quite see from what the producers are being protected either -- what threat do UK farming practices currently present to EU farmers, retailers and consumers, or vice versa?
If the answer is "at the moment, none, but we fear that, at some future date, they might do," then why not cross that bridge if and when we come to it?
I see the necessity of ensuring a level playing field, but since we know the playing field is level, at least at the moment, why the great rush to impose burdensome checks to demonstrate what we already know and what we know, in practice, is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future? If individual problems arise, as they do from time to time, with BSE or horse meat being sold as beef, then there are already perfectly adequate safeguards in place.
If the UK looked like signing a trade deal with the US before the EU does, I could see the problem, but since that's not going to happen, it's not an issue and isn't likely to become one.
Similarly, I don't see why the UK would think that the threat of people smuggling sub-standard products from Russia or Turkey, for example, into the UK via the EU are any greater now than they were this time last year, so why do we need to impose any more stringent checks than we did before?
I think what's got me thinking this that, at least in the UK, the government left the whole problem of food distribution during the pandemic to the supermarket industry to handle, and they did a very good job of it -- far better than anything the government could have managed, judging by the cockup it made of PPE distribution -- and the reason our vaccination programme has gone so smoothly is, again, that the government has stayed out of it and let the NHS and the Army run it.
So why not continuing letting people get on doing what they're good at, without trying to interfere too much?