should our deal with usa mean end of red tractor?

[Highland Mule]

We export French Beans to the U.K we are subjected to both Global GAP and the individual supermarkets codes of practice and we are audited by the Kenyan goverment , we cannot use chemicals with no registration in U.K we cannot use chemicals registered in U.K for our crops but not registered in Kenya . 10% of all our exports are tested both on Farm and on arrival in U.K. Then the customer does further checks.
From my experience it is unlikely that any retailer would be keen to put anything that will bring bad publicity on them remember Tesco and horsemeat.
If U.K produce is better advertise the fact and let the public choose Just remember the public should have the same choice when choosing food as farmers do when buying cars or machinery. If the red tractor gives the U.K a marketing advantage then keep it. But i am baffled by people thinking that products that are illegal to produce in the U.K will be allowed into the U.K under a trade agreement. If American cars come without brakes can they be imported.

All very reassuring. What’s the story with GM soya though?

 

[fieldfarmer]

And growth promoted (hormones)beef?

 

[Lowland1]

But a car with crap brakes is a car with crap brakes and patently dangerous.
Beef produced using hormone implants and feed additives that are illegal here is still a tasty bit of beef.

And growth promoted (hormones)beef?

All very reassuring. What’s the story with GM soya though?

I would presume if it's illegal to produce it in the U.K it would be illegal to import and sell. I really find it hard to believe that any government would allow things in the country that are below the present standards however they may reduce the standards to allow this to happen. Which would be why you need some form of bench mark for local produce to say it's better than imported or else you can go ahead and chlorinate your cows and implant your chickens and start growing GMO soya to feed them.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

I would presume if it's illegal to produce it in the U.K it would be illegal to import and sell. I really find it hard to believe that any government would allow things in the country that are below the present standards however they may reduce the standards to allow this to happen. Which would be why you need some form of bench mark for local produce to say it's better than imported or else you can go ahead and chlorinate your cows and implant your chickens and start growing GMO soya to feed them.

There is no reason to believe your presumption would be correct.
I think 1 example would be countries that have banned stalls don't necessarily stop imports of pork from those that haven't.
I would have thought that your experience of trading would have given you a good understanding of the control the supermarkets have on food imports and their continual efforts to increase standards [and costs for producers] while paying less.
It will probably be as important to have tight rules on labeling [And ACTUALLY enforce them] than to have strict import rules. It is always the cheapest [and usually the lowest standard product] that is used to control the price of the higher standard products.
Producers should at least have a choice as to which level of standard to compete against.

 

[Lowland1]

There is no reason to believe your presumption would be correct.
I think 1 example would be countries that have banned stalls don't necessarily stop imports of pork from those that haven't.
I would have thought that your experience of trading would have given you a good understanding of the control the supermarkets have on food imports and their continual efforts to increase standards [and costs for producers] while paying less.
It will probably be as important to have tight rules on labeling [And ACTUALLY enforce them] than to have strict import rules. It is always the cheapest [and usually the lowest standard product] that is used to control the price of the higher standard products.
Producers should at least have a choice as to which level of standard to compete against.

With regard to stalls the problem is EU rules overriding local rules. Now the U.K can set its own rules and as such has the final say not the EU.
If i wish to sell into the U.K market i have to abide by their rules if they say i can only export on Tuesdays and only if wearing a straw hat then fine that's what i have to do. However if the U.K says that it's O.K to take my beans even though i have chlorinated them and sprayed them with hormones because they need to sell hoovers or cheddar cheese to Kenya well that would be a bit daft.

 

[JP1]

I would presume if it's illegal to produce it in the U.K it would be illegal to import and sell. I really find it hard to believe that any government would allow things in the country that are below the present standards however they may reduce the standards to allow this to happen. Which would be why you need some form of bench mark for local produce to say it's better than imported or else you can go ahead and chlorinate your cows and implant your chickens and start growing GMO soya to feed them.

Really. A US President who got enraged as Twitter decided to fact check two of his Tweets and now having a right go on their "editorial responsibilities" taking on Google, Facebook and the like, I'm sure he'd be capable of anything

 

[kiwi pom]

Really. A US President who got enraged as Twitter decided to fact check two of his Tweets and now having a right go on their "editorial responsibilities" taking on Google, Facebook and the like, I'm sure he'd be capable of anything

Would a trade deal not be good for Beef farmers? It would give you a bigger market for beef surely?
I don't think NZ has a trade deal with the US (?) but its always first or second in destinations for exports. Worth nearly a Billion NZD last year I think.

With all the problems their meat plants are having at the moment they might be looking to import.

 

[Hindsight]

DOMINIC LAWSON
Farmers are telling pork pies about US food

Hypocrisy and protectionism threaten to put post-Brexit trade deals at risk
Dominic Lawson

Sunday May 31 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
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The Conservative Party does not, as a rule, quail before the demands of unions. But to every rule there is an exception, and this one is called the National Farmers’ Union. Cynics would say that is because it is a union of employers, but there is more to it than that: there have always been close ties between landed interests and the Tory party. Historically, many of its MPs have such a background: notably, the current secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, ran his family’s farming business before becoming a politician.

It is in this context that we should view the NFU’s campaign to terrify the public about the possible consequences of the US-UK free trade deal now being negotiated, which is at the heart of the government’s post-Brexit strategy.


The Conservative-supporting press has in recent days been deluging readers with the most apocalyptic warnings: the chairwoman of the Monmouthshire NFU, for example, authoring a leader page article headlined “Cheap, sub-standard American food... and why a US trade deal could devastate our glorious countryside”, while another pro-Tory paper gave an entire page to Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames, urging the government to “Stand up for Britain against a US invasion of chlorinated chicken and hormone-stuffed beef”.
In the Commons earlier this month the government fought off an amendment to its Agriculture Bill, proposed by two Tory MPs, which would have prevented US food imports under any trade agreement, unless UK standards of animal welfare were met by the American farmers involved. A further attempt will be made in the House of Lords next week, as the legislation continues its passage.
Soames declared “this is emphatically not about protectionism” (perish the thought), but was part of Britain’s mission to lead the world to higher environmental standards, citing as precedent the former prime minister Theresa May’s “bold decision to legislate this country’s commitments to reach net zero carbon by 2050”. A similar line was taken by the proposer of the motion in the Commons, Simon Hoare: “Just as this country has been the trailblazer against female genital mutilation [and] modern slavery, so I believe we can be in our high standards . . . with regard to animal welfare.” Never can an attempt to protect a domestic industry from feared competition have been cloaked in such a mixture of high-flown moralising and folie de grandeur. But there is an additional absurdity here, one that threatens to expose the British negotiators on the future trade deal with the EU to terminal ridicule.

We have constantly told its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier — and will again in the latest round of negotiations this week — that we regard as completely unacceptable his demand that in return for a free trade deal the UK should, as if we were an EU colony, faithfully track the environmental rules set by Brussels (the so-called level playing field). So how would it be taken if we simultaneously insisted that America should follow our ecologically motivated legislation if it wants a deal with us? Barnier would delightedly point out our hypocritical double standards. The Americans would remind us that they are no longer a British colony and wave goodbye.
We have claimed that the EU’s demands of us are unprecedented in trade negotiations. But what the NFU wants us to demand of America would be equally so. Animal welfare standards have never been incorporated in trade negotiations. Instead, and sensibly, such deals confine themselves to the standards of the food produced — specifically, that it is safe to eat. This, as the former international trade secretary Liam Fox points out, “is anchored in World Trade Organisation law under the SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement”.
That is why the EU has used false claims that the American process known as “pathogen reduction treatment” (the spraying of poultry carcasses for a few seconds with an antimicrobial solution) is unhealthy for consumers — even though the EU’s own Food Safety Authority 15 years ago pronounced that “exposure to chlorate residues arising from treated poultry carcasses would be of no safety concern”. The truth is that American factory-farmed chickens might even be safer to eat than their UK equivalent (though both have grotesquely confined and brief lives). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, while US citizens eat more than twice as much poultry per capita as Europeans, instances of food poisoning by salmonella and campylobacter per 100,000 of population are 20.4 and 66.3 in the EU, but only 15.45 and 13.45 in America.
These are the facts that underpinned Boris Johnson’s remarks in his first speech after the UK left the EU on January 31: “I must say to the America bashers in this country — if there are any — in doing free trade deals we will be governed by science and not by mumbo-jumbo, because the potential is enormous.” Less than a fortnight later, he sacked Theresa Villiers as secretary of state at Defra, but retained Liz Truss as international trade secretary, even though Villiers had been on his side during the referendum, while Truss had backed remain.
Villiers, who had completely bought the NFU line, was later among the Tory rebels who voted for the Hoare amendment. But it is an open secret that Eustice, who had been her deputy at Defra before being appointed in her place, has been backing the NFU demand that US food exporters meet UK standards of animal husbandry — and Michael Gove (Villiers’s predecessor at Defra) is in the same camp.
All three had campaigned for Brexit (and cited “cheaper food” as one of the justifications). Yet it is the ex-remainer Truss having to point out to the cabinet that if, as is quite likely, no trade deal is reached with Brussels, it will be all the more important to strike one with Washington — not least for the British car industry, with sales to America currently about two-thirds the scale of its exports to the EU. And it’s not as if our entire farming industry fears a deal with the Anglophile Donald Trump. Noting that the US is the world’s second-largest lamb importer, but currently bars imports of British lamb, the head of our own National Sheep Association this month declared himself “convinced” that there would be “real interest” in the US “for British lamb and mutton, very different products to those produced by most US sheep farmers”.
What a refreshing change from the protectionism masquerading as concern for the public health that threatens to destroy our negotiating position with Washington and Brussels — simultaneously.
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[kiwi pom]

I don't believe American food to be cheap or sub standard.
The NFU is trying to protect its members, they're a union that's what they do. Not sure why Dominic Lawson is so surprised by that.

 

[Lowland1]

I am absolutely baffled by all of this. As far as I am aware no trade deal has been done with the USA. If it were it would be unlikely that product of lower standards would be allowed into the U.K what would happen is U.K standards may be reduced but surely it is more likely that whatever comes to the U.K have to meet our current standards.
When I worked in the States a lot of the John Deere and Case tractors I drove did n't have handbrakes but just a parking lock on the gear selector or a lock on the pedals and they did n't have brake lights and the indicators worked in a different way. A lot of these tractors were sold in Europe but there was no big farming lobby to stop them being imported because they were n't up to our standard. They just fitted handbrakes and changed the lights and sent them.
This will be what will happen if they want to export farm produce to U.K then they will have to meet U.K standards no matter what they are if these are too strict then they won't do it simple as that. I don't think the U.K Car industry spends much time lobbying to have Americans drive on the left because our cars are set up for the other side of the road they change the car to suit the market.
American food is generally pretty good the problem is they eat too much of it.