would allow for the introduction of products that have previously been off the table: “That’s what the goal is
- no restrictions, so products can move freely back and forth.”
It is an issue that has received backing from prominent American farming executives, even if some lip
service has been given to having “a conversation” about the US food standards that have worried some in
the UK.
Currently farming exports to Britain – including wine, nuts and fruit – are worth only about $1.8bn
(£1.47bn), a fraction of the total overall sales of $133bn. That means there is potentially massive room for
growth, under the right circumstances.
With the US saying that the UK will be “first in line” for a trade deal following Brexit, Zippy Duvall, the
head of the American Farm Bureau, recently said that they are eagerly watching for ways to begin a trade
partnership – but that Britain had to accept US standards.
“You know, here in America we treat our water with chlorine,” Mr Duvall, a poultry farmer himself,
recently told the BBC. He claimed it was not a public health issue, saying: “So there is no scientific basis
that says that washing poultry with chlorine wash just to be safe of whatever pathogens might be on that
chicken as it was prepared for the market should be taken away. If there was something wrong with it our
federal inspection systems would not be allowing us to use that.”
Chlorine-washed chicken was banned by the European Union in 1997, which virtually stopped all exports
from the United States of US chicken meat, which is often treated with the antimicrobial wash.
The wash itself, though, is not the issue. The EU’s Food Safety Authority said in 2005 that “exposure to
chlorite residues arising from treated poultry carcasses would be of no safety concern”. Chlorine-washed
bagged salads are sold in the UK and other countries in the EU, for instance.
But what is of concern is that relying on chlorine washes – which proponents say makes harmful bacteria
virtually undetectable – at the end of the process allows farmers to keep unsanitary conditions for the
chickens earlier on. And the wash could allow for crowded abattoirs where disease could theoretically
spread with greater ease.
While it is tricky to compare the rates of food-borne illnesses between two countries, two separate studies
would suggest that the US experiences higher rates of salmonella infection. One British government study
from 2014 found that there were roughly 55 salmonella infections per 100,000 people, when analysing 2009
data. A separate study of the US found a rate of 350 infections per 100,000 people, using data from
2002-2008. When it comes to deaths, the US also reports higher numbers. While the US Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention reports around 380 deaths a year due to food-borne salmonella, England
and Wales had zero such deaths between 2006 and 2015, according to the most recently available data from
Public Health England.
Gail Soutar, the chief European Union exit and international trade adviser for the National Farmers Union
(NFU), says that there is a considerable level of anxiety that a hasty and chaotic Brexit could leave UK
farmers competing against a flood of international goods coming in, and undermining their prices.
Soutar says she is particularly concerned at the prospect of a no-deal outcome, and the impact that
subsequently high tariffs on UK agricultural products could have. Farmers, she worries, could be threatened
by a flood of new goods being brought in from the US, which could undermine efforts to honour European
Union standards – with the EU, for now, a much larger trading partner than the US. “There is a concern
that we are going to see an increase of imports coming into the UK under a no-deal situation,” she says. “It
remains absolutely key that we get a deal with the EU.”
UK politicians have at least paid lip service to the notion that standards will not be abandoned in pursuit of