Rishi Sunak has vowed to take chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef off British tables in future trade deals, promising to put UK farming at the heart of government trade policy.
“There will be no chlorine-washed chicken and no hormone-treated beef on the UK market. Not now, not ever,” he will tell farmers in a letter unveiling a new government policy to improve British food security.
And in a swipe at his predecessor, Liz Truss, the prime minister will also tell the farming community that they will not be “an afterthought” in deals with foreign farmers.
At the first Farm to Fork summit in Downing Street, the government will outline a new approach to improving food security, with targets that the UK produces 60% of the food consumed in the country.
The National Farmers’ Union and other agricultural bodies have spent most of the seven Brexit years battling to persuade the government that giving other countries with lower standards and cheaper food production access to British markets is counterproductive.
Welsh farmers said they had been “chucked under the bus” by Truss’s race to get deals with industrial-scale Australian rivals who could undercut local farmers.
Sunak will tell farmers: “When you consider the scale of the opportunities within our grasp as we forge new trade deals around the world, British farming and British produce simply cannot be an afterthought. I know that is how some of you felt in the past.”
He will also tell food chiefs that he is fully committed to ensuring “without exception” that he will never do a deal that includes chlorinated chicken or beef from hormone-fed cattle, practices associated with factory farms in the US.
Sunak’s commitments put his policies into sharp contrast with predecessors Truss and Boris Johnson, whose thirst for a US trade deal was stymied by his policy on Northern Ireland.
The president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Sunak was making a commitment previously absent from government policy.
“People will be full of understanding that we have had three very different prime ministers in the last year and in fairness, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has set out a very different agenda.
“He has made it very clear in black and white that there will be sensitive sectors in all trade deals. This played out in the Trans Pacific deal, [the CPTPP] and we are going to see sensitive sectors [protected] from now on and he’s saying farmers will be at the heart of this,” she said.
“[He has] also put it in black and white that we will never be importing hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chicken so I think everything that we have done has had huge impact on the people of this country are absolutely behind that ambition. I’m delighted to see him support it.”
Food security was put into sharp focus last year when the UK and other countries in Europe experienced shortages of salad items due to weather-impacted crops in southern Europe.
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This year, fears were expressed about trade deal links to deforestation in Mexico after a government minister said beef from the country could hit UK supermarket shelves under a new trade deal.
At the time, Batters said: “I am very concerned about links to deforestation. From Mexico our lines are pretty tough on this having given away so much on beef to Australia and New Zealand. We want the government to take a very, very firm line on further imports of beef.”
Reacting to Sunak’s letter, a spokesperson for the campaign group Global Justice Now, said: “The best way for the prime minister to show he’s serious would be to give parliament a binding vote on future trade deals so he can be held to his word.
“Instead, last month he even scrapped the dedicated committee that scrutinises them. This looks like another empty promise from a government that has put City profits ahead of protecting food standards time and again.”
Meanwhile, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called on the government to halt rocketing food prices.
Analysis by Labour of the government’s statistical dataset of the average price of wholesale home-grown vegetables shows that British-grown tomatoes cost 67% more than they did at the same time in 2019. In the 19th week of 2019, the average wholesale price for a kilogram of cherry tomatoes cost £1.79; however, the latest price in May 2023 stands at £3.00.
The rocketing prices also include a 109% increase for the price of a head of cauliflower, a 95% increase on asparagus, an 82% increase on strawberries and 62% on leeks.
Analysis by the Liberal Democrats has also found that even though the wholesale prices on basic products such as bread-making wheat and fruit and veg have tumbled in recent months, prices for consumers in supermarkets have continued to soar.
