US and UK trade digs over food standards post-Brexit

Woody Johnson, the US ambassador to the UK, has claimed that there is a “smear campaign” against American agriculture as he said US food standards would not lead to lower quality food than under current European Union standards.

There have been concerns raised about the possible lowering of food standards in the UK after Brexit as the government could be in a rush to sign a trade deal with the US, leading to worries about imports of chlorinated chicken, hormone-fed beef and the use of certain pesticides and food colourants not approved in the EU.

Britain's Environment Secretary Michael Gove said food standards would remain as they are.

US diplomats claimed the EU’s standards were a “museum of agriculture” approach to food safety after concerns were raised by the UK's Soil Association.

“UK public health and wildlife could be negatively affected if our food and farming standards are sacrificed in pursuit of a US trade deal,” said Rob Percival, the Soil Association’s head of policy. “UK farmers have been making positive strides in recent years, reducing farm antibiotic use and these efforts risk being undermined by a trade deal that floods the UK market with US meat.”

On Wednesday, the leading Brexit supporter George Eustice, who resigned from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last week, wrote in the Guardian that US agriculture was “quite backward” and that the UK should not sign any deal that would reduce food standards as it could “give free trade a bad name”.

The Soil Association is set to launch an updated food risk list for US-UK trade talks later this week.