As the new year made Brexit a reality, Tony Hale encountered the pitfalls of Europe’s redrawn political geography. Specifically, he confronted the need to extricate 53 tons of rotting pork products from administrative purgatory at a port in the Netherlands.
For more than two decades, Hale’s company had shipped pork to the European Union without customs checks, as if the United Kingdom and the continent across the water were one vast country.
With the U.K. now legally outside the bloc, exporters have suddenly had to navigate inspections, safety regulations and a bewildering crush of paperwork.