Ministers deserve to be treated with suspicion on food safety

THE fearmongering must stop, environment minister Victoria Prentis told rebellious Conservative MPs on Monday night as they sought to win protection for UK farming and food production standards via the Agriculture Bill. Yet Ms Prentis and the government singularly failed to take the simple and necessary step that could have brought that fearmongering to a halt.

If ministers were serious about sending a cast-iron, bullet proof message to the British consumer that they take the welfare of farmed animals and the safety of food seriously, they would have backed the amendment to the Agriculture Bill already supported by the House of Lords.

At a stroke the measure would have enshrined in law in advance of Brexit the need for food imports to meet the same standards of hygiene and animal welfare to which UK farmers must adhere. Any amount of soft-soaping from the likes of Ms Prentis insisting “we are not going to be importing chlorine-washed chicken or hormone treatment beef” isn’t as good as a vote by Parliament making such imports illegal.

Government claims that those laws already exist doesn’t help their case at all. If that’s true why object to a bit of gold-plating? By refusing to accept this amendment, which is backed by farmers, supported by more than a million public votes in an NFU petition and has the overwhelming backing of MPs of all colours in rural constituencies, then why not simply accept it?

The suspicion must be that while eyeing-up potentially lucrative trade deals on other products and services ministers can see the potential to use some leverage when it comes to food and drink. “We’ll take your meat products, from animals raised to far lower standards than allowed by our farmers, and in return we’d like to sell you this...” is how many fear the conversation might go.

It may be true that products which would not meet UK standards when they get to the supermarket shelf will be refused entry. But back along the production chain, what is to say that all the standards to which UK farmers adhere would also be in place? It seems entirely plausible that some wriggle room might be found to enable a deal to go ahead.

That matters, not just because it leaves UK consumers potentially exposed to food reared in ways with which they are uncomfortable. It matters too because farmers in the UK, still subject to the laws as applied here, would not be able to compete on price. In the US they view such regulation as protectionism and suggest the answer is not to ban US products produced to different standards but instead to loosen the rules so British farmers can compete on a level playing field.

That, though, is a race to the bottom. And as British consumers have shown again and again, when it comes to their food and drink British consumers want standards to be raised, not lowered.

NFU president Minette Batters, questioned before Monday night’s debate on the Agriculture Bill was asked if farmers wanted a belt and braces approach to food safety and welfare because they didn’t trust the government. She kept her counsel. But, on current form, we would say she’s right to be suspicious.