Phillip Blond is Director of ResPublica.
Food is one of those rare commodities that is important to everyone, and for obvious reasons.
We all eat three meals a day, our health and happiness is heavily influenced by the food we eat, and most would agree that access to high quality, nutritious, and affordable food is a basic right that should be available to all.
Yet, I wonder how many families – sitting around the dining table to enjoy their customary Sunday roast, perhaps – would be comfortable knowing that the food they are consuming may have been produced in low-grade, unethical, and environmentally damaging conditions abroad?
This is the topic of ResPublica`s new report on UK trade policy and animal welfare, which has brought together the National Farmers Union (NFU) and Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in support.
It argues that the Government has a chance to use the development of its own trade policy to become a global leader in animal welfare in the agri-food sector, and thereby drive up standards around the world.
The NFU and RSPCA concur: for an international drive on ethical food production, the UK must be the one to set the bar.
With the Conservative leadership contest well underway, and with two very different economic prescriptions being presented to the nation, now is a perfect moment to remind Teams Truss and Sunak of the wider social and environmental implications of their approaches to future trade deals.
The UK has already rushed into two Free Trade Agreements with Australia and New Zealand, both of which have come under significant scrutiny on agri-food grounds.
This is perhaps not surprising. Agri-food is an area which is always contentious, owing to the role of domestic agriculture in national life – in providing national food security, and as an employer and critical source of income in rural areas.
As the UK continues to go its own way post-Brexit, it will sign further trade deals that will give countries preferential access to its market through lower tariffs. That is a laudable aim.
However as we do so it is critical that we account for the shared concerns of farmers, animal welfare campaigners, and the wider public.
In its drive to cement a new trading strategy for the UK, the Government must not forget that being a global leader in animal welfare is no fair-weather duty. What we don’t want to see is the efforts of British farmers and food producers being undermined by trade deals that simply wave in food which has been produced in ways that are illegal here – and at the same time making poor animal welfare practices more permissible elsewhere.
If we fail to draw such a line in agreements with relatively similar nations like Australia and New Zealand, how can we expect to protect our domestic food industry from countries with production standards that diverge even more radically from our own, such as India?
To its credit, the Government listened to the pleas of more than a million people who joined the NFU’s call for the establishment of an independent Trade and Agriculture Commission in 2020, which now advises on how trade policy can safeguard British agri-food standards.
Yet it has also already rejected the recommendation that preferential access to the UK’s market should be conditional on meeting our domestic ethical criteria. Both the Australia and New Zealand FTAs commit to ‘cooperation’ on animal welfare issues, but also to the phasing out tariffs on beef and lamb without conditionality on any sort of core standards at all.
The FTAs also contain little in terms of ‘hard measures’ to disincentivise controversial practices common in Australia, including in sensitive areas such as live animal transport times and the clearing of tropical forests for beef production.
Happily, our new report contains a list of measures that the Government could easily adopt to address this disparity.
First and foremost, it should adopt the interim Trade and Agriculture Commission’s proposal that trade liberalisation (in the form of tariff and quota reductions) should be linked to meeting environmental and animal welfare standards in production.
In parallel, it should adopt a set of core production requirements in the agri-food industry that will apply to any future trade deals and import policy more broadly.
The UK should also work towards harmonisation on these issues within trade agreements; and show leadership in international forums such as the World Organisation for Animal Health, the International Plant Protection Convention, and Codex Alimentarius for food safety standards.
The bottom line is that the UK must not allow our existing animal welfare practices to be undercut by imports produced in countries with lower production standards, and generally less qualms about how the sausage is made.
That would undermine the efforts of British farmers and food producers to improve animal welfare in the agri-food sector, and make poor animal welfare practices carried out elsewhere yet more permissible.
When buying meat or other animal products at a British shop, the public should feel confident that what they are buying has been produced according to Britain’s ethical guidelines. If we do not act along these lines, we risk having some of the highest standards in the world… with no one producing to them.
Phillip Blond is Director of ResPublica.
Food is one of those rare commodities that is important to everyone, and for obvious reasons.
We all eat three meals a day, our health and happiness is heavily influenced by the food we eat, and most would agree that access to high quality, nutritious, and affordable food is a basic right that should be available to all.
Yet, I wonder how many families – sitting around the dining table to enjoy their customary Sunday roast, perhaps – would be comfortable knowing that the food they are consuming may have been produced in low-grade, unethical, and environmentally damaging conditions abroad?
This is the topic of ResPublica`s new report on UK trade policy and animal welfare, which has brought together the National Farmers Union (NFU) and Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in support.
It argues that the Government has a chance to use the development of its own trade policy to become a global leader in animal welfare in the agri-food sector, and thereby drive up standards around the world.
The NFU and RSPCA concur: for an international drive on ethical food production, the UK must be the one to set the bar.
With the Conservative leadership contest well underway, and with two very different economic prescriptions being presented to the nation, now is a perfect moment to remind Teams Truss and Sunak of the wider social and environmental implications of their approaches to future trade deals.
The UK has already rushed into two Free Trade Agreements with Australia and New Zealand, both of which have come under significant scrutiny on agri-food grounds.
This is perhaps not surprising. Agri-food is an area which is always contentious, owing to the role of domestic agriculture in national life – in providing national food security, and as an employer and critical source of income in rural areas.
As the UK continues to go its own way post-Brexit, it will sign further trade deals that will give countries preferential access to its market through lower tariffs. That is a laudable aim.
However as we do so it is critical that we account for the shared concerns of farmers, animal welfare campaigners, and the wider public.
In its drive to cement a new trading strategy for the UK, the Government must not forget that being a global leader in animal welfare is no fair-weather duty. What we don’t want to see is the efforts of British farmers and food producers being undermined by trade deals that simply wave in food which has been produced in ways that are illegal here – and at the same time making poor animal welfare practices more permissible elsewhere.
If we fail to draw such a line in agreements with relatively similar nations like Australia and New Zealand, how can we expect to protect our domestic food industry from countries with production standards that diverge even more radically from our own, such as India?
To its credit, the Government listened to the pleas of more than a million people who joined the NFU’s call for the establishment of an independent Trade and Agriculture Commission in 2020, which now advises on how trade policy can safeguard British agri-food standards.
Yet it has also already rejected the recommendation that preferential access to the UK’s market should be conditional on meeting our domestic ethical criteria. Both the Australia and New Zealand FTAs commit to ‘cooperation’ on animal welfare issues, but also to the phasing out tariffs on beef and lamb without conditionality on any sort of core standards at all.
The FTAs also contain little in terms of ‘hard measures’ to disincentivise controversial practices common in Australia, including in sensitive areas such as live animal transport times and the clearing of tropical forests for beef production.
Happily, our new report contains a list of measures that the Government could easily adopt to address this disparity.
First and foremost, it should adopt the interim Trade and Agriculture Commission’s proposal that trade liberalisation (in the form of tariff and quota reductions) should be linked to meeting environmental and animal welfare standards in production.
In parallel, it should adopt a set of core production requirements in the agri-food industry that will apply to any future trade deals and import policy more broadly.
The UK should also work towards harmonisation on these issues within trade agreements; and show leadership in international forums such as the World Organisation for Animal Health, the International Plant Protection Convention, and Codex Alimentarius for food safety standards.
The bottom line is that the UK must not allow our existing animal welfare practices to be undercut by imports produced in countries with lower production standards, and generally less qualms about how the sausage is made.
That would undermine the efforts of British farmers and food producers to improve animal welfare in the agri-food sector, and make poor animal welfare practices carried out elsewhere yet more permissible.
When buying meat or other animal products at a British shop, the public should feel confident that what they are buying has been produced according to Britain’s ethical guidelines. If we do not act along these lines, we risk having some of the highest standards in the world… with no one producing to them.