UK Edition
British farming can be ‘envy of the world’ after Brexit, leading agriculture figures tell Prime Minister
Brexit is an opportunity for British farming to become “the envy of the world”, farmers and environmentalists have told the prime minister in a rare joint missive.
The National Farmers Union, Greenpeace and the RSPB, along with 60 other organisations, have written to Boris Johnson calling for food standards to be enshrined in law after we leave the EU, in a letter seen by the Telegraph.
“Brexit can be a catalyst for UK farming not just to be the envy of the world, but to provide gold-standard model for high standard, high quality, sustainable food production,” reads the letter, which was sent over the weekend.
It calls for the government to include its manifesto commitment to maintain animal welfare and food standards during trade talks in the forthcoming Agriculture Bill.
It also calls for a trade and standards commission to oversee any post-Brexit trade deals, amid fears the government is willing to accept imports of food with lower standards, including chlorinated chicken from the US.
The letter comes as the prime minister is under increasing pressure from the US to exclude Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G networks ahead of any trade deal negotiations.
A final decision is expected to be made at a national security meeting on Tuesday.
It marks a rare shared vision for forces often at odds over green issues, particularly red meat consumption.
Greenpeace has previously called for meat and dairy production to be cut by 50 per cent while the NFU has said farming can become climate neutral without lowering output.
Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive and one of the signatories of the letter said: “The number of organisations supporting this letter should leave the Government in no doubt about the strength of feeling on this issue.”
Farmers are already likely to come under pressure as £3.3bn of subsidies from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy are redirected, and fear cheap imports could further threaten the industry.
While Boris Johnson has sought to promote the benefits of scrapping tariffs and EU regulations, the letter says Brexit means the UK can pioneer “a new type of global trading system; one that moves away from the narrow and dated focus on ever cheaper goods, regardless of how they are produced, to one that rises to the challenges of climate change and promotes more sustainable models of production and consumption across the world.”
“This is about grasping the moment of Brexit to be a global leader,” said Nick von Westenholz, the Brexit expert at the NFU which coordinated the letter and Director of EU Exit and International Trade.
The UK last year became the first major economy to commit to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and will this year host the key COP26 international climate meeting.
A report from the government’s climate change advisory body last week said cattle and sheep farming should be cut by 10 per cent for the government to meet the 2050 target.
But the report warned that cuts should not be replaced by imports, particularly as British farming is significantly less carbon intensive than average global production.
The government has made repeated assurances that food standards will be respected after the UK leaves the EU, but has yet to make any legally binding commitments.
Theresa Villiers, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said earlier this month that the UK would not allow chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef into the UK.
“Ultimately you hear lots of warm words about UK farming at the moment but if at the same time you go and do a quick and dirty deal with the US - or anybody else - that just undermines it,” said Mr von Westenholz.
He added that the focus on chlorinated chicken “sort of misses the point a bit.”
“If you look across the board in many other countries their general standards of production are not as stringent as in the EU,” he said. “By and large they have cheaper costs of production because they're not required to meet the same standards. But that's not the sort of production that we want.”
He pushed back against the idea that free trade deals that bring in cheaper food imports would be beneficial to British consumers.
“Food as a proportion of income is the third cheapest in the world in the UK,” he said. “So the fact that there are very obviously people who can't afford food, is not an issue with the price of food.”
Consumers have come to rely on high food standards and may not be aware that new imports may not be the same quality, he added.
“Is that the vision of Brexit - that you can't really trust what you're eating?” he said.