Appetite for destruction: The Tory trade deal with the US

Two years later, campaigners are warning negotiations on trade deals could result in a major rolling back of food quality in the UK, with the prospect of American chlorinated chicken on supermarket shelves and the reappearance of long-banned pesticides in food.

Any drop in standards could also herald a “recipe for disaster” for the farming industry, it is feared, as it is forced to compete against lower quality and cheaper food imports.

Nearly one million people have signed a petition organised by the National Farmers Union (NFU) calling for the UK Government to introduce laws that would prevent lower standard foods being imported into the UK.

READ MORE: This is why a UK-US food trade deal will be awful for Scotland

It has been backed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and is believed to be an unprecedented response to a campaign by the farming organisation.

Leading investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman said there could be a whole raft of changes “radically affecting” the quality and safety of food in the UK after Brexit.

“The best way to understand it is that when we were in the EU, there were two dominant ways of thinking about food,” she said. “There was the European mindset, which was very much cautious and not going to take risks with the environment or human health. As long as we were part of the EU, that was protecting us.

“There are lots of things that you can use in American food and that can be done to American food that are not legal here.”

She added: “The kind of food that America stands for is hyper-processed junk foods, which is produced in a way which is likely to trash the environment and may be quite bad for human health.

“That’s what you are up against, a kind of industrial food model.

“So you’ve always had that sort of difference. What’s happening now is that with Brexit we are under pressure to adopt the same low standards as they have in the States.”

READ MORE: Michael Fry: The real cost of the US’s chlorinated chicken

UK ministers have previously made commitments not to lower food standards in Brexit trade deals. Gove also pledged “no” to chlorinated chicken in 2017, saying: “We are not going to dilute our high animal welfare standards or our high environmental standards in pursuit of any trade deal.”

In January this year then Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers said: “We will not be importing chlorinated chicken. We will not be importing hormone-treated beef.”

However as trade talks with the US have got under way in recent weeks, Washington has made clear greater access to the British food market will be its price for a trade deal. It has been reported as insisting on “comprehensive market access” for US agricultural products and the elimination of “unwanted barriers” to food and drink imports.

At the beginning of this month, it was reported Boris Johnson is willing to contemplate allowing certain US products into the UK – with leaks suggesting he is keen on a “dual tariff” system said to be aimed at protecting British producers operating to higher welfare standards.

Blythman said this would represent a “major step backwards” for food standards in the UK.

READ MORE: UK Government and Japan begin talks on post-Brexit trade deal

She said: “I never thought we would be in this situation discussing this because we’ve made so much progress.

“In Britain we had BSE and that was a huge watershed for the British public. That really was a game-changer for people’s mindset about food, and since then we’ve always wanted strict standards. All this will be unpicked if this trade deal goes through, and it won’t just be chlorinated chicken. It will be GM food, it’ll be all sorts of pesticides that we stopped using will be allowed again.”

Much of the focus of the debate has been around the issue of chlorinated chicken, a practice banned by the EU in 1997 but common in the US. It involves washing poultry in chlorine to protect consumers from food-borne disease.

The concern is the high levels of bacteria it is designed to combat are a symptom of poor hygiene and low animal welfare conditions which are not permitted in UK farming. But the issue around food standards is far wider, according to a Sustain, an alliance campaigning for better food and farming standards.

It has published a new report highlighting how trade deals with countries such as the US, Australia and India could drive down standards.

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THE examples given include American grapes being allowed to contain 1000 times the amount of the insecticide propargite, that can affect sexual function and fertility, and has been linked to cancer and miscarriages.

Another is the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has been shown to affect the cognitive development of foetuses and young children and was largely banned from use in the UK in 2016 but is used by farmers in the US and India.

Vicki Hird, head of farming at Sustain, said: “The issue of chlorinated chicken is around wanting to keep the protection that European Commission regulations provided.

“But we’re much concerned about other issues like pesticides – in other countries they have licensed a whole heap of pesticides that we have banned for either health or environmental toxicity reasons.

“Another area is the amount of sugar allowed in food and our labelling, which is now standardised across Europe to a certain extent.

“We will possibly lose that and so people won’t be able to choose products that they know are not pumped full of sugar or other additives or other chemicals unless they look really carefully. That is of great concern, particularly for children.”

Hird criticised the idea of dual tariffs for lower quality products, which it been suggested is being contemplated by Johnson.

READ MORE: UK Government ready to allow import of US chlorine-washed chicken

“The dual tariff would mean that we will be able to apply higher tariffs to products which have standards we don’t allow here,” she said.

“But if you have banned something, you ban it for a good reason, it reflects our values in society for animal welfare or food safety or environmental safety and we have banned it because that’s what we want.

She added: “To then allow things to come in, even at a higher tariff, is inappropriate.”

Hird said they had “pages and pages” of quote from ministers over recent years pledging not to lower food standards. But she added: “It doesn’t mean anything unless it is

accountable to the public or to the parliamentarians. The reality is when you look at the leaked documents about the negotiations between the US and UK for those initial negotiations, it is really clear that the US holds all the cards in this.”

Sustain recently highlighted a letter sent by members of the US Congress to US trade representative Robert Lighthizer in March on behalf of US poultry farmers, which called for the trade agreement with the UK to resolve the “unscientific ban” on chlorinated chicken.

The letter read: “Lifting this ban will set the stage for future agreements, such as with the EU, and reinforce the Administration’s stance that US farmers and ranchers are an integral part of the American economy that should not be left behind.”

Hird said: “That is the big prize for them, they want to access the European market and I imagine they want to break some of the European regulations on genetically modified food and on pesticides.

“They want to use the UK as a gateway to break those regulations in Europe.”

Responding to the Sustain report the UK Government said it will not compromise on “high food and environmental standards” and would only permit the use of pesticides where “robust scientific assessment shows they will not cause any harm to people or the environment”.

Last month an amendment to the Agriculture Bill that would have ensured current UK food and farming standards would have to apply to future deals was voted down by the Government.

The bill is now going through the House of Lords, where fresh attempts are expected to be made to bring in legislation to guarantee standards.

SNP shadow spokesperson for agriculture and rural affairs, Dave Doogan, said requiring farmers to compete against imports produced to lower and cheaper standards is a “recipe for disaster” for the sector.

READ MORE: Scottish foods sold to EU may have 50% price hike after Brexit

He said: “MPs and the public know that if the Tories had any intention of protecting UK consumers from imported food produced below equivalent UK standards of animal welfare, environmental protection and food safety, they would have ensured their legislation reflected this.

“Instead, they forced this matter to a vote, and so opened the door to an ‘anything goes’ future for food import standards.

‘‘Consumers will soon have to individually discern matters of provenance regarding the flour in their biscuit, the beef in their lasagne and all manner of other ‘hidden’ ingredients.”

He added: “The Tories have badly misjudged the mood of the public on this hugely important issue facing us post Brexit.

“We can see this most clearly in Scotland where alone, all six Tories voted against the amending the Agriculture Bill and thereby acted against the express wishes of the Agricultural Sector in Scotland and the National Farmers Union of Scotland.”

In a briefing submitted to members of the House of Lords, NFU Scotland has warned it is vital there is legislation in place to ensure UK farmers will not be exposed to “competition from sub-standard imports”.

This would “undermine UK and Scottish farmers and result in lower standard food for Scottish and UK consumers”, it added.

NFU Scotland President Andrew McCornick, a beef and sheep farmer from Dumfriesshire said: “We were deeply disappointed when the House of Commons failed to back important amendments to the Agriculture Bill which would have ensured all food consumed in the UK is produced in a way that matches the high welfare, environmental and traceability standards expected of UK farmers.

“The public dismay at that vote has simply strengthened our resolve now that the bill has moved to the House of Lords before returning to the Commons later in the year.”

McCornick said the NFU petition, which has gathered more than 950,000 signatures, was giving politicians a “crystal clear message” on how the nation feels about the “potential pitfalls of a poor trade deal that fails to support food and farming”.

He added: “The very strict controls on farming methods practised in the UK should be the minimum legal requirement placed on all food which is imported here.

“Our commitment to producing food to the highest standard must not be sold away in a bid to secure any trade deal unless the standards expected by our consumers are guaranteed in any imports.”