The State vetoes the entry of frozen products of non-animal origin into the ports of Las Palmas

Given this scenario, the port entity proposed, shortly after the veto, rent a cold container and place it in the PIF of La Luz, apart from the camera that the installation already had, as a temporary solution to be able to resume service in the shortest possible time.

Those affected speak: “It is costing us dearly”

The measure was approved by the department of the Ministry of Health, which granted authorization to the inspection point. However, the ports of Arrecife and Puerto del Rosario are still pending to recover this permit.

For all this, some of the affected importing companies have decided to raise their voices and denounce the situation in which they found themselves involved “without eating or drinking it and without being to blame for anything”, as stated by Mario Cruz, director of Alcruz Canarias. SL, and which, furthermore, continues to generate a series of expenses which, according to Cruz, do not correspond to them. “All this is costing us a lot,” she confesses on the other end of the phone.

These businesses demand from Foreign Health a definitive solution for the port of La Luz and Las Palmas, with the intention that “don’t just be a patch,” as pointed out by another of the injured parties, director of a customs agency in Arrecife.

But, above all, They demand the unlocking of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, where containers with products of non-animal origin from countries not belonging to the European Union must be redirected to other ports due to the impossibility of passing the PIF at their own docks.

In this sense, the Port Authority proposed, in the case of Lanzarote, using a freezing chamber that the port of Arrecife has and that is currently unused as an alternative to work with this type of merchandise. However, according to the public body, although the procedure was carried out a month ago, it is still “has not received a response from the Ministry.”

The delay worries those affected. «The usual thing happens, they quickly solve the problem in the port of Las Palmas, because that is where they suppose they do the most damage, but then they don’t pay any attention to the so-called minor islands,” says the director of the Lanzarote customs agency. «It may take months until Health gives the go-ahead. What do we do in the meantime? », He says.

With respect to the port of Puerto del Rosario, the Port Authority has not presented any temporary solution to deal with the veto, as it did with those of La Luz and Arrecife, since it assures that this, for the moment, “has not transferred any need.”

The health notice

The director of Alcruz Canarias SL felt the statement he received on February 7 from Foreign Health feel like a shock. In it, he was informed that the container of sweet corn from China that he was expecting could not pass the PIF in the ports of La Luz and Las Palmas, since The facility’s authorization to work with this type of product had been withdrawn, as well as the Gran Canaria airport, as indicated in the document. He later learned that the veto also extended to the ports of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

When he thought he had no choice but to move the merchandise to Tenerife to pass the inspection, “the pressure exerted by the affected companies and the Port Authority” managed to get La Luz to recover the authorization “sooner rather than later”, so the container passed the PIF. «If not, I would have had to find a shipping company to take it to Tenerife and another to bring it back to Gran Canaria. That would have cost me, at least, about 3,000 euros, although I still had to pay for the delay,” explains Cruz.

With another container, which came from Egypt, he did not have the same luck and he was forced to reroute it before it reached Fuerteventura. “I called to have him taken off the ship and sent directly to Gran Canaria, because in Puerto del Rosario I knew he was not going to pass control,” he says. Faced with this, the Port Authority is considering building a second cold room in the PIF of the ports of Las Palmas as a possible long-term solution “when there is demand for such.”