The US-UK trade deal versus UK food standards: compromises or kept promises?

It was arguably a very important week for the UK in terms of securing the first trade deal with the highly unpredictable and often aggressive US administration. Though not a comprehensive trade agreement, Peter Mandelson, the UK ambassador to the US, described it as ‘a platform for going further and opening up more trade opportunities’. The government will for obvious reasons, consider it a bit of a coup, being the first nation to agree any form of a deal with the US – and the terms do seem extremely favourable for some manufacturing sectors in the UK, especially car and steel manufacturers.   

Food standards under pressure – but a line was held

But what about our food and farming industries?  

For many years there has been a deep concern that any trade deal with the US would result in a weakening of UK food standards. The current government promised this would not be the case but, let’s face it, politicians often make promises they fail to keep. However, in this case, we must really congratulate the government for not backtracking and sticking very much to their word. Despite immense pressure from the American negotiating team, the British side didn’t trade a single aspect of UK standards to get the deal through. I can be critical of quite a few politicians and their parties, but in this instance I must congratulate ‘our team’ for winning this battle.  

Part of the trade deal involves new reciprocal market access for beef, allowing UK farmers to export 13,000 metric tonnes of beef tariff-free to the US. In return, US farmers gain the same level of access to the UK market. This has raised some concerns about tonnes of hormone-treated beef making its way to our plates. However, the deal explicitly states that UK food standards must be observed and thus this should, in principle, rule out the import of any meat from hormone-treated animals. But what about in practice?   

Hormone-treated beef: can we really keep it out?

The reality might be somewhat different. This is a complex area that I first started to work on several decades ago: how can you tell whether livestock has been treated with hormones? The answer is by undertaking some very complex testing; not in meat itself as the levels of the hormone present are usually incredibly low, even in treated animals, but rather their offal and urine. Yet even this  requires a complex and very expensive testing protocol using highly sophisticated equipment and skilled laboratory staff. 

I was asked by a journalist from The Times if border checks can ensure hormone-treated beef is kept out of Britain. The answer to this, without a very significant investment in inspections, audits and lab testing is most likely no. The onus in the trade deal to ensure no such treated beef comes into the UK lies with the US and their traceability and testing systems. While they do have such programmes, I’m not overly confident in their robustness or indeed if they are still operational, given the swathing cuts to the US departments that have oversight of the monitoring programme. An interesting and perhaps worrying publication by one branch of the US Government showed that when tested, 20 percent of samples were found to contain antibiotics in cattle reported to be raised without antibiotics. So clearly self-declaration of being ‘antibiotic treatment free’ and most likely ‘hormone treatment free’ isn’t one that can be relied upon.  

A battle won, but the war is far from over

The amount of testing of meat imported from the US that will be conducted in the UK will range from minimal to possibly none. Partly due to the costs involved, and realistically, does the UK Government really want to find any problems? Normally in such trade agreements teams of auditors will go to foreign countries to conduct audits of the monitoring system; however, again I doubt if there will be much political will on either side of the pond to set up such a reciprocal arrangement. So perhaps a problem in the making?  

But we must view all of this in context. The UK produces around 900,000 tonnes of beef each year and the amount of imported meat will account for less than 1.5 percent of this amount. The problem may emerge further down the line if the quotas get increased as the number of agreements grow. But for now I think we can consider the impact on our cherished food standards as minimal at worst and most likely zero. This really is a win for our farmers and all of us that enjoy the taste and nutrition of home-grown, naturally produced beef.  

Despite the UK appearing to have won this battle, I think the food standards war between the US and UK has many more battles ahead.