WATCH: Vet puts down Nigel Farage leaving him speechless

Daniella Dos Santos, a leading vet from Maidstone, was discussing Brexit fears for the veterinary industry and the impact on the amount of food coming into the country.

She shot down the former UKIP leader on his main argument that the UK can ‘produce cheaper food’ when it leaves the EU.

‘Cheaper food invariably comes with lower welfare, and if you have lower welfare particularly in animal production, you need more vets,’ she said.

She added: ‘The minute we leave the EU we are going to have a 300 per cent shortfall in vets, and this is not me scaremongering – it’s a fact.’

A bullish Farage, who admitted he was not aware of the full facts about the industry, claimed: ‘If I want to buy someone’s product, and I pay money for it, I can do that whether we’re members of the European Union or not’.

The vet quickly hit back: ‘Say we’re organising a trade deal with some Asian country, and that Asian country stipulates that before an animal product leaves this country it needs veterinary certification. As it currently stands – we don’t have enough vets to certify for export.’

Farage was left speechless as Dos Santos added that this was not scaremongering but the truth, and LBC listeners were treated to a period of dead air while the vet was left wondering whether she had been cut off.

He returned to the airwaves stuttering as he tried to regain control of the debate, quickly accepting the caller’s point and ending the call.

‘It could be the lowering of standards in terms of what we buy in the shops, and it could be bad news for British farmers,’ he admitted before reassuring Brexiteers ‘if we need vets we’ll get vets to come and work in Britain’.

A video of the debate has received a huge amount of attention online, and has so far been viewed more than half a million times on social media.

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https://twitter.com/rfctabs/status/1023611374273011713

https://twitter.com/VetDannii/status/1023611222728556546

So this has gone a little mad, but for those of you that want the honest facts as to how Brexit is going to impact on my profession, here it is. This is not scaremongering, it's the truth. #animalwelfare @LBC @mrjamesob https://t.co/cCr9zBMU9Q
— Daniella Dos Santos (@VetDannii) July 30, 2018

https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/status/1023840877788188672

https://twitter.com/grierson_david/status/1023623410025463813