UK will not import chlorinated chicken from US, ministers say

Britain will also ‘not negotiate to remove ban’ on hormone-fed beef in post-Brexit trade deal

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
@lisaocarroll
Sun 1 Nov 2020 17.50 GMT

The government has finally vowed not to allow chlorinated chicken or hormone-fed beef on British supermarket shelves, defying demands from the US that animal welfare standards be lowered as part of a future trade deal.

The international trade secretary, Liz Truss, and the environment minister, George Eustice, have also revealed the government will put the recently established trade and agriculture commission on a statutory footing with a new amendment to the agriculture bill.

“We are announcing today that it will be made a statutory body which will give independent advice on trade deals as they go through parliament,” they said in an article in the Mail on Sunday.

The move is a significant U-turn for the government, which had rejected Lord Curry’s amendment to the bill to strengthen the commission’s role and legally ban any food that does not meet British import standards post-Brexit.

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