Jamie’s war on toxic U.S. food
Chef and fitness guru Joe Wicks lead plea to Boris: Don’t trade away children’s health
A POWERFUL alliance of chefs, celebrities and charities today urges Boris Johnson to block substandard foods from flooding into the UK under post-Brexit trade deals.
In a heartfelt open letter, stars including Jamie Oliver and fitness guru Joe Wicks call on the Prime Minister not to ‘trade away our children’s futures’.
The move comes as International Trade Secretary Liz Truss faces growing Parliamentary pressure to bolster protections against poor quality foreign food – and save British farms from being put out of business by cheap imports.
In a crunch Commons debate expected within the next fortnight, MPs will vote on new plans to give watchdogs on the Trade and Agriculture Commission the power to enforce high food standards.
The letter – also backed by BBC Countryfile presenter Anita Rani, chef Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall and charities including the RSPB and RSPCA – demands assurances that ‘lowerstandard’ meat, such as US-produced chlorinated chicken or hormone-fed beef, will not be sold in British stores or served in restaurants and canteens after we exit the EU’s standards regime. They say that the Covid19 pandemic has ‘raised the stakes’ because
‘now, more than ever, we need to make sure everyone has access to affordable, good quality and sustainable food’.
The letter – an edited version of which is reproduced on the page opposite – warns Mr Johnson: ‘If we don’t get this right, progress made as a result of your Government’s obesity and health strategy could be wiped out.
‘Let’s not enter a race to the bottom and allow low quality products to flood the UK. Chlorinated chicken will be just 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’.
The letter also argues that ‘the British public cares deeply’ about these issues – a point made in a Mail on Sunday poll today.
The Deltapoll survey reveals that 68 per cent of people believed the most important priority for Britain was to maintain high standards for food, even if that means some trade deals were not possible.
Only one in five (21 per cent) thought that compromising on standards was acceptable.
This newspaper urges readers to send a version of the letter to their local Tory MP, as opposition MPs are expected to support moves to protect standards.
However, the Government last night branded the letter ‘totally misleading’ and insisted: ‘Our manifesto commitment could not be clearer – we will not compromise on high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.’
The Government was heavily defeated in the Lords last week on its Agriculture Bill, when peers overwhelmingly backed calls for greater powers to block sub-standard food imports and moves to give Parliament the final say on post-Brexit trade deals.
By a majority of 107, peers backed a call from cross-bencher Lord Curry, a retired farmer, for the Trade and Agriculture Commission to be given greater, permanent, powers. Peers also backed a call by Labour’s Lord Grantchester to keep out foods produced to standards lower than the UK’s. The Government defeats set up the prospect of a Tory rebellion in the Commons next month.
Last week, NFU president Minette Batters met Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove to urge him to beef up the commission, which is currently scheduled to last just six months and which, critics say, does not include specialists in child health or environmental and animal welfare issues on its panel.
Amid mounting concern over Ms Truss’s ‘toothless’ commission, a Future British Standards Coalition is launched today, including representatives of the Tenant Farmers Association and the RSPCA. It will be chaired by Kate Dalmeny from food and farming alliance Sustain.
She said last night: ‘British people have made it abundantly clear that they expect to keep the high food, environmental and animal welfare standards they currently enjoy.’
So far, more than a million people have signed a petition to save food standards following the launch of The Mail on Sunday’s Save Our Family Farms campaign.
In an article on the facing page, former Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers reminds the Prime Minister that the Tory manifesto for the 2019 Election pledged there would be no compromise on the UK’s food and animal welfare standards after Brexit. Even George Eustice, the current Environment Secretary, has described animal welfare laws in the US as ‘woefully deficient’, with up to a million chickens crammed together in hanger-like facilities.
Slaughtered chickens are sometimes washed in chlorine due to the number of bugs on American poultry farms, while US cattle farmers use steroid hormones to speed growth – a practice banned by the EU since 1989. One drug routinely used, 17-beta oestradiol, is a known cause of cancer in humans.
Last night, Tory MP Neil Parish, who has already led one Commons Tory rebellion over post-Brexit food standards, urged compromise.
Mr Parish, chairman of the Commons’ environment, food and rural affairs committee, said: ‘The Lords picked up where we left off, raising fundamental concerns about how food standards are going to be protected. The Government still has an opportunity to act proactively.’