UNPALATABLE TRUTH
75% of Britons don’t want chlorinated chicken ... and nine in ten reject hormone-treated beef
THREE- QUARTERS of the public oppose the sale of chlorinated chicken in Britain, a major Government- backed study said yesterday.
and nearly nine out of ten are against any new food trade deal that allows hormone-treated beef.
The country’s deep reluctance to accept meat they believe is produced to worrying standards was confirmed by one of the most respected political opinion tests – the British social attitudes survey.
The findings, which show widespread alarm at the possibility of declining safety in theme at processing industry, were released ahead of next Monday’s Commons reading of the agriculture Bill – which has no safeguards against the import of meat from america produced using controversial methods. The survey – which has been conducted annually since the early 1980s and is funded by the Government’s Economic and social Research Council – found 48 per cent believe Britain should definitely not allow chlorinated chicken and 75 per cent thought i t should probably be banned.
The verdict against selling beef from cattle fattened with hormones was even more overwhelming.
More than six out of ten – 61 per cent – said hormone-treated beef should definitely be barred and 88 per cent said it should probably be kept out.
Opening the British market to american meat farmers and their methods will likely form a centrepiece of negotiations as the Government tries to bag a post-Brexit trade deal with the us.
Trade secretary Liz Truss said that British rules against chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef, long established under the Eu’s agriculture regime, will not be abandoned in search of a trade deal.
But concern has grown since farming minister Victoria Prentis told Tory MPs that the Government will not accept amendments to enforce existing standards in Monday’s Commons voting. The British social attitudes report said its research ‘suggests that people in Britain would be reluctant to see the UK swap the Eu’s stance for that of the usa’.
The survey also found that 59 per cent opposed geneticallymodified crops, which are common in the us. and nearly twothirds of the 2,411 interviewed are in favour of continued regular subsidies to farmers once Britain leaves the Eu’s Common agricultural Policy, which subsidises European farmers and imposes tariffs on food imports from outside the Eu. Professor John Curtice, a researcher for the National Centre for social Research which runs the survey, said: ‘There does not appear to be a widespread public clamour for a less strict regulatory regime than the one Britain enjoyed as an Eu member.’