UK Government plans ‘dual-tariff’ system for US chicken imports

Farmer's Weekly ^ | 4 june 2020 | Philipp case

[Cronos]

Boris Johnson’s government is ready to allow imports of US foods produced to lower welfare standards under a strict tariff regime to protect British farmers, according to reports.

Ministers are said to be considering allowing foods such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef on to UK supermarket shelves with a new so-called “dual-tariff” regime.

Under the system, products that do not comply with high UK animal welfare standards would be subject to high import tariffs.

The government source told the Daily Telegraph that the upper band of duty would remove any economic advantage foreign producers would gain by producing food to lower standards.

In addition, a lower tariff regime could be applied to imports that do meet high standards, such as organically reared, free-range meat, giving British farmers a competitive advantage, the report claims.

The dual-tariff system was adopted at a ministerial meeting on Monday 1 June, and it will be proposed to US officials as part of ongoing negotiations over a post-Brexit trade deal. It remains to be seen whether US trade negotiators are receptive to the plan, especially since US president Donald Trump opposes tariffs.

The report claims the plan is a “major victory” for Defra secretary George Eustice, who had opposed an alternative proposal by international trade secretary Liz Truss to reduce tariffs to zero over 10 years.

The NFU said it was not aware of the detail and was still awaiting any official government confirmation.

An NFU spokesperson said: “The NFU is quite clear that trade agreements shouldn’t allow the import of food that would be illegal to produce here, which would undercut British farmers and their high standards.

“We are asking the government to introduce a Trade, Food and Farming Standards Commission that can review trade policy and develop solutions to promote free trade while holding all food imports to the UK’s high food standards.”

The revelation comes as more than 380,000 people have signed an NFU petition which urges the government to introduce laws that prevent food being imported to the UK using methods that would be illegal to use here.

Meat processors in the US wash chicken in chlorine to kill bacteria. But the practice has been banned in the EU and therefore in the UK since 1997.

Ministers have repeatedly pledged that UK food standards will be maintained after Brexit. But British farmers remain deeply concerned that a flood of cheap food imports will undermine current standards and risk putting them out of business.

In January, the then Defra secretary Theresa Villiers pledged that no chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-treated beef will be allowed into the UK under any trade deal with the US.

But in February, Defra secretary George Eustice refused to rule out the possibility of importing chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-treated beef in any future free-trade deal with the US.

Last month, an amendment to the Agriculture Bill put forward by MP Neil Parish, seeking to legally require equivalence of standards for imported foods, was defeated in a Commons vote by 328 to 277 votes – a majority of 51.

The Agriculture Bill is currently on its second reading in the House of Lords before it is due back to the Commons in July.

A spokesperson for the UK government said: “The UK is renowned for its high environmental, food safety and animal welfare standards.

“We have been clear that in all of our trade negotiations – including with the US in our first round of negotiations – that we will not undermine our high domestic environmental protection, animal welfare and food safety standards by ensuring in any agreement British farmers are always able to compete.”

[Cronos]

“We have been clear that in all of our trade negotiations – including with the US in our first round of negotiations – that we will not undermine our high domestic environmental protection, animal welfare and food safety standards by ensuring in any agreement British farmers are always able to compete.”

[MAGAthon]

3 Jun: Breitbart: Britain Unleashes a Green New Deal to Kill What’s Left of the Economy
by James Delingpole
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has found an ingenious scheme to ensure that Britain never recovers from the economic damage caused by the lockdown: a ‘green industrial revolution’...

There is going to be no escaping this looming disaster, caused by a mass outbreak of green groupthink at virtually every level of the Boris Johnson administration – from Prime Ministerial girlfriends (green activist Carrie Symonds) to key members of the quadrumvirate (Greenest Gove ever), from Prime Ministerial advisors (Dom Cummings) to formerly sound Tory MPs who definitely aren’t any more because they’ve been put on the payroll and have to spout whatever eco bilge they are told to spout.

In the latter category, we can include Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng who, shamingly, can now be heard spouting drivel about how the UK is going to become a ‘world leader in tackling climate change’ by launching a carbon Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Meanwhile, as Western nations choose to hobble their recoveries by burdening their economies with more expensive energy, the Eastern powers, led by China, are heading in the opposite direction.

According to the Times, China is upping its coal usage...

What exactly did Britain do to deserve a Conservative government quite this lumpen, embarrassing and un-Conservative? And given that the Opposition is actually even worse what can we possibly do to save ourselves from this ongoing, slow-motion train wreck of a disaster?
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/03/britain-unleashes-green-new-deal-to-kill-whats-left-of-the-economy/

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

At the end of the day they are still politicians, and have to consider public opinion. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/07/majority-of-uk-public-back-2030-zero-carbon-target-poll blame a leftist woke cultural establishment and education system for brainwashing the public.

[Cronos]

Yet this ban on imported chickens will safeguard the British farmer from competition

[kaktuskid]

From the home of Mad Cow Disease, which is caused when you feed diseased sheep brains to cows

[deadrock]

But I was told by the Pro-China Freeps that tariffs don't work.

[Winniesboy]

That a British Conservative government should pick up a green agenda isn't that surprising - in the UK environmentalism has never been a clear-cut left/right issue to the extent that it is in the US. There has been a 'green streak', if I can call it that, in the Conservative Party since the 1930s and the reaction to the growing industrialisation of agriculture. (There's also long been a corresponding anti-green streak in the Labour Party.) In neither case has that streak ever dominated, but it's always been there.

It's no accident that 'conservative' and 'conservation' share their etymology.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Well, I guess that will take a quid pro quo in the negotiations. I’m sure both sides will have to make concessions when these discussions have concluded for the general overall benefit of both parties.