BAN THIS HELL MEAT FROM UK
Mirror exposes US horror farms lining up to trade with us in post-Brexit deal
THE Mirror has visited gigantic farms in America where tens of thousands of cattle are pumped with hormones.
Charities are urging the Government to ensure meat raised in these “terrifying” feedlots is not part of a UK/US trade deal.
Today the Mirror begins a series from across America looking at the issues that matter most ahead of the November 3 ballot.
Over the coming weeks, we will journey far from the tourist centres to the real America.
Health, wealth, trade and the environment are all at stake when Donald Trump and Joe Biden go head to head.
Many we meet warn of what US life could mean for Mirror readers in a post-Brexit Britain.
DRIVING down a country road in Kansas, the miles of dull yellow prairie give way to the sinister black of steel-fenced rectangles as far as the eye can see.
But it is not the sight of tens of thousands of cattle crammed into pens and awaiting slaughter that causes chaos with the senses first.
Even with the windows closed, the putrid smell of the conditions in which they live leaves the nostrils feeling on the verge of collapse.
On arrival, the stench hits you like a punch in the face and lingers in your car and on your clothes for days.
When not eating, the cattle stand around braving the elements without a blade of green grass in sight.
They lie in what looks like greyish mud. Except on closer inspection it dawns on you it isn’t mud. Nearby sit vast lagoons pumped with waste.
Welcome to hamburger central, the cattle’s hormone- and antibiotic-filled industrial journey on America’s monstrous feedlots. And one day soon the meat could be heading to the UK.
There are growing fears that food with lower welfare standards from the US will be forced on Britain as part of a US/UK trade deal.
ILLEGAL
An alliance of charities and chefs is so concerned that they are now urging Boris Johnson to vow to block substandard food flooding into Britain under any post-Brexit trade deals.
The RSPCA, RSPB, chef Jamie Oliver, Countryfile presenter Anita Rani and fitness guru Joe Wicks are among those who are supporting the open letter to the Government.
They demand assurances that “lower- standard” meat, such as hormone- fed beef and chlorine washed chicken, will not be sold in British shops or served in restaurants.
The letter says: “Chlorinated chicken will be the tip of the iceberg.
“We’re talking about meat produced with growth hormones and high amounts of antibiotics, crops grown with illegal pesticides that are harmful to bees, and a flood of sugary and ultra-processed products, promoted with massive marketing spends and without clear labelling to tell us what we’re really eating.”
They urge the Government, which in two weeks is due to hold a Commons debate on the Trade and Agriculture Commission being given the power to enforce high food standards, not to “trade away our children’s futures” in negotiations. The Government has branded the letter “totally misleading”. Before they cast their vote, MPs would do well to stand at the edge of a giant feedlot in America’s cattle country, where calves born on feeder farms are delivered to the lots to be fattened for several months before being shipped out for slaughter.
The diet is predominantly corn, often genetically modified and dubbed “Frankenfood”, which wreaks havoc on digestive systems of cattle, as they evolved to graze on grass, not grain.
The cattle are fed daily rations of antibiotics while 90% of lot livestock are given growth- promoting hormones and approved feed additives called beta-agonists which are legal in the US but have been banned in Britain since the 1980s.
Antibiotic feeds such as Rumensin to fight intestinal disease and Tylosin to control liver abscesses are widespread. Critics say the system subjects animals to poor welfare and intensifies growth beyond the point at which their bodies can cope.
In his election manifesto, Boris Johnson pledged the UK would “not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards”.
But there is increasing anxiety the Tories have changed their stance on animal welfare and food safety to strike a trade deal with America.
And ministers are reported to be considering proposals to allow hormone- fed beef and chlorinewashed chicken to go on sale in the UK. Now as the US election looms, few countries will be watching the result as closely as the UK.
Britain’s big supermarkets have vowed never to sell chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-injected beef.
But the pressure will be immense from Trump if he wins the election.
Washington insiders have told the Mirror that Trump will aggressively push the UK to accept US meat.
At the Fairview Livestock Auction in Fairview, Oklahoma, many farmers believe Trump is the only option.
Veteran rancher Barry Ring, 69, said: “Trump puts America first.
“A trade deal with the UK can only be good for the US and the President it the man who can secure it.”
After first being welcomed at the auction, the Mirror was asked to leave
by owner Cale James after a manager at a Texas feedlot – more than 210 miles away – raised the issue we were looking into feedlot conditions.
“Your politics are not aligned with ours,” James said, making you wonder why feedlots prevented us from being given a tour of their sites.
British farmer Joe Stanley is scathing about US conditions and a possible US/UK trade deal.
He told the Mirror: “What you’re seeing in America is a symptom of cheapest food at all costs.
“The Americans have the cheapest food in the world.
“In Britain, although we have remarkably high standards we are the third cheapest in the world per capita.
“The vast majority of our beef is raised outdoors on grass.
“If you just take [America’s] use of growth-promoting hormones, that gives them a 30% competitive advantage over this country because they can finish their cattle 30% quicker.
“That’s before you factor in the fact they’re shovelling GM corn down them which would be illegal here.
“The reason we’re still able to offer this product [cheaply] despite having our highest standards is because to this point we’ve been inside the [EU’s] Common Agricultural Policy, which, provides public funds to maintain our very high standards.”
Joe, who runs the 750-acre Blackbrook Longhorns farm in the National Forest in Leicestershire called US feedlots “terrifying”. He added: “If you’ve got 110,000, you can not give them the
care and attention I can give my hundred cattle. They’re grazing the fields and in winter we bring them in to keep them out of the weather.
“In this country we’re world leaders in animal welfare. If we’re producing food to the top on the top rung, we can’t let food come in that wouldn’t even make it on to the bottom rung.
“Why on earth would you want Donald Trump dictating our food standards? We don’t want a two-tier system whereby the poorest are forced to eat the dregs of the global food system, while the better off can afford to buy high quality British food.”
Dr Sara Shields, farm animals welfare expert at Humane Society International based in the US, said of American practices: “There is strong science- based evidence that the welfare of cattle in feedlots is poor... When the natural behaviour of animals is prevented, there are tangible physiological and health consequences for the animals.”
The diet US cattle are fed can lead to problems such as liver abscesses.
She said calves sometimes travel for 15 hours to feedlots, adding: “Transport is stressful, as it involves unfamiliar surroundings, noise, vibration, social regrouping, loading and unloading, potential temperature extremes, rough handling, and feed and water deprivation.
“Transport is so stressful that calves may become sick.” In the UK, the legal transport limit is eight hours.
There is concern that whoever wins the election, America’s farm belt will be calling the shots in Britain unless the UK Government digs its hooves in.
We produce food on the top rung... US food would not even get on the bottom rung
FARMER JOE STANLEY COMPARES BRITISH AND AMERICAN STANDARDS
LOWERING animal welfare standards after Brexit to secure a trade deal with the USA would be a betrayal of decency.
The mistreatment of hormone-pumped cattle packed into industrial plants in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma which we expose today is a warning: a warning sub-standard meat should never be allowed on our dinner plates.
Campaigning chef Jamie Oliver, fitness coach Joe Wicks and other prominent figures who signed the letter demanding the Government must not surrender, must keep out chlorinated chicken and the other food America wants to dump in Britain, are on the right page.
We are what we eat and that means we must raise the quality of meals, never lower them to appease an over-mighty US agribusiness at the cost of our own farmers and health.
We demand all MPs stand up to be counted, protecting the quality of the meat we consume. Trade deals must be in Britain’s favour.
As animal lovers, importing the carnage of US factories is a red line we cannot cross.