No chlorinated chicken or hormone-fed beef in future trade deals, Sunak vows

theguardian.com:

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