We don’t need US deal if we support quality food from Britain and EU
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss wants us to do a trade deal with the US with no amendments on food standards.
I don’t think we should do a deal with the US at all on food and food products.
We have our own British market, and, if necessary, imports from the European Union.
Anne Ellis, Bishops Sutton, Hampshire
I witnessed the horrors of a feedlot on the border of New Mexico and Texas in the late 1980s, where cattle had no shelter from the soaring desert heat, or the freezing desert in winter, nor the golf-ballsized hailstones that would beat their skin. After growing up in rural Suffolk, seeing this was too much to bear. Angela Wiley,
Bury St Edmunds
Sadly, most countries have cruel farming industries. It is not just the USA.
The European Union recognises farm animals as sentient beings. Despite this, tens of billions of animals endure short, sad lives in factory farms, where profit is a priority, not good care.
We need to take action against all factory farming. The USA’s treatment of cattle is terrible, yes. But aren’t we just as bad? Jessika Cooper,
Torrington, Devon
The so-called ‘special relationship’ means nothing when profits are at stake, and America will always put its own interests first. Keeley-Jasmine
Cavendish, London
Cheap imports from the US, where the rearing of livestock in massive meat factories is heavily dependent on growth hormones and antibiotics, would mean a lowering of our own standards. To compete, our farmers would have to adopt the same animal-cruel industrial methods. Even then, very few would be able to do it on the massive scale required.
Some livestock farmers could go down the organic road – if they’ve got years to reach the standards. Or they could just hope that enough consumers will put quality before price when shopping for meat. Alan Aitchison,
Wakefield