FARM OFFENSIVE
No matter how much we want – or need – a trade deal with the US, animal welfare standards must not be allowed to slip
FOLLOWING the UK’s departure from the European Union, never before has the result of a US election mattered so much. Putting aside who wins the White House race in less than two weeks, the impact of America’s vote could have enormous ramifications on British shores.
Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the food we eat. The UK is now locked in talks with the US over a deal that poses a genuine and worrying threat to the lowering of food standards. Within the British farming community, which has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, there is a growing fear it will not survive the coming onslaught of global competition. For the past several months, I have travelled across the states, seeing for myself the standards US beef, chicken and pork producers hope to impose upon on us under a new deal.
What I saw should be of concern to us all. Whether it be inside a chicken house, crammed full of birds unable to carry their own colossal weight, or cows pumped full of hormones, the conditions which I have witnessed left me, a red meat-loving Brit, reconsidering my own diet.
At the heart of the issue is cost. American pork production is about half that of the UK due to accelerated rearing methods such as sow stalls and the use of growthenhancing feed additives like Ractopamine.
Similarly, among the teeming meat metropolises which house tens of thousands of cattle with not a blade of grass in sight, the daily rations of antibiotics and growthpromoting hormones see beef brought to a plate in no time at all. As for chickens, after being slaughtered in their billions each year, they are then washed in chlorinated water and sprayed with peracetic acid to make any bacteria left on them apparently safe to eat. All these practices are banned under EU regulations, which the UK must abide by until the transition period ends in January next year. The Conservatives assured Britons in the run-up to last year’s election, that if they were in government they would “not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards”. Today, all trace of that promise has gone. MPs rejected the latest attempt to require imported food to meet domestic legal standards, striking down a Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill to force trade deals to meet UK animal welfare and food safety rules.
The Government argues EU rules banning imports of chlorinewashed chicken and other products will be automatically written into UK law once the post-Brexit transition period ends on December 31.
But the Lords made several changes, including one which would give MPs a veto over parts of a trade deal relating to food imports, which would be required to comply with “relevant domestic standards”.
They argued these changes were necessary to make it impossible for the
US or other countries to export so-called chlorinated chicken or beef fattened with hormones. However, last week MPs voted by 332 votes to 279 – a majority of 53
– to back Government plans to reject the amendment.
It came as the US continues to exert huge pressure on the UK to accept their substandard meat or face possible retaliatory action such as banning Scottish salmon imports. It highlights the increasing pressure British negotiators are under to allow lower standards of food onto our shelves to secure a deal with the States.
Those politicians who backed the Government would do well to see the sights I have witnessed before compromising the standards Brits enjoy today.
As former US government chicken inspector Karla Hadley, 37, told me, anyone who consistently eats American poultry “may as well just drink a gallon of bleach”.
In its desperation to agree a deal with the US, our politicians must not accept lower animal welfare standards.
We want to be able to pride ourselves on leading the world, in or out of the European Union, and not be left like lambs to the slaughter to America’s demands.