Wary Dutch hire foreign vets for Brexit customs checks

The Netherlands is hiring around 100 mainly foreign veterinarians to check imported animals and food from Britain in its latest contingency plan for a no-deal Brexit, the government said Friday.

Most will be recruited from southern and eastern Europe as there are not enough qualified vets to spare in the Netherlands, and they will receive a crash-course in the Dutch language before being deployed.

European Union countries are increasingly concerned that Britain will crash out of the bloc without a divorce agreement on March 29, meaning that customs checks and tariffs would automatically return.

The Netherlands in particular has taken a number of steps to ease the expected impact of the rift with one of its biggest trading partners.

"We want to take precautions," a spokeswoman from the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) told the ANP news agency, adding that it wanted to train 143 new employees including 100 veterinarians.

The NVWA said it was working on the ...