UK-US trade deal. What it means for British agriculture
In July 2020, I wrote an article to denounce a trade deal between the US and the UK, which is happening because of Brexit.
It would be too easy to speculate that the greedy conglomerates were the driving forces pushing for Brexit, using the same tactics, and lies, to make us buy products we’ve never asked for — products that are inundating the aisles of all stores nationwide and making the US country one of the sickest countries in the world — but I guess I will leave it to you to make your own conclusions.
We know from this side of the pond that Brexit was based on lies and that money we were told would have gone to the EU will be used to provide relief to the NHS and get more jobs.
Where is the money?
Where are the jobs?
Today, we know the government is still trying to reach a trade deal with the US.
The US is pushing for: All US food eligible to be sold in the UK, including those currently banned (beef treated with growth hormones, Ractopamine pork, chlorinated chicken, chemically-washed beef).
Why should we be alarmed?
For example, American grapes are allowed to contain a thousand times more pesticides (e.g., propagate). We also know that many of the final products are laden with chemicals to make up for the fact that animals are raised in deplorable conditions. They are, for the most part, packed inside unsanitary premises (to say the least) and rarely — if ever — see the light of day and are fed a diet that is nowhere near what nature intended.
Experts are predicting the trade deal could change UK farming forever and will decimate British agriculture.
A recent Channel 4 documentary exposed intensive feedlots (anywhere up to 40,000 or more cattle).
The way the US is producing beef is simple: cattle typically spend less than a year of their lives in fields grazing grass then it's off to a feedlot. From there, they are given a diet of grain and silage. The aim is to force the animal to pack on muscle and fat at a faster rate than they ever would eating grass. In other words, feedlots produce obese animals that have life-threatening gut disorders, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol and are stressed behind what is acceptable.
Chronic infections and respiratory issues are also very common (from walking on their own faeces and breathing dust made by tonnes of dried faeces lifted by the wind).
That’s not all. The documentary also revealed that beef producers are allowed to inject their cattle with six different growth hormones so they get bigger faster, increasing the profit.
All of these hormones have been banned in Europe for over 30 years. The European Union looked at the risks and concluded that concerning at least one of the hormones, 17 beta-estradiol, there was clear evidence that in certain population subgroups, it could increase the risk of certain cancers, particularly breast cancer, and also reduce sperm counts.
For the others, they concluded there wasn't sufficient evidence, yet they are acceptably safe in the US.
The US authorities had effectively been blind and, in effect, people living in America are not protected by the same high-level studies and scrutiny. When it comes to potentially risky substances in food, in Europe (and still in the UK until further changes), we adopt “the precautionary approach” meaning something must be proven safe before it's allowed to enter the food chain. In the US, something has to be proven to be dangerous before it's banned.
Now, we can see why it could be problematic if the UK adopted the same approach.
Other concerns...
It's not just beef we need to be concerned about in any trade deal. In most US states, sows are packed in windowless hangars, in crates so small they cannot even move. Many videos online show sows locked to the floor, unable to move for the rest of their lives. In the UK, the approach is still similar but sows can only be contained in crates for eight weeks after giving birth.
Not only is this animal cruelty, but those facilities are environmental disasters, producing tonnes and tonnes of excrement, bacteria (including drug-resistant bacteria) and nutrients, which pollute streams, rivers and nearby lakes.
We need to understand that this is a 4-billion-dollar-a-year industry with about 78 million pigs in the US and we know money always wins and corrupts everything.
Yet, the biggest concern for UK consumers is the use of the highly-controversial drug called ractopamine. The drug mimics adrenaline and is fed to pigs to boost muscle growth extremely fast = massive profits for pig producers.
Ractopamine could not be more controversial because it has resulted in over 200 000 reports of adverse impacts on pigs. Again, the US is producing extremely sick animals inside horrible and unsanitary facilities.
Professor Christa Hogstrand was on the EU food safety panel that reassessed ractopamine in 2009. Speaking to the media about this, he explains that in a study done on humans, ractopamine increased heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers also concluded the study did not provide adequate assurance that the expected ractopamine levels in meat will be without effects on man and, therefore, there is no safe level to which humans can be exposed and ractopamine is currently banned in the EU.
The Channel 4 documentary also had this to say: “Last year we revealed how chemical washing is used to compensate for poor hygiene in American chicken processing plants I mean the hygiene in the plant it was just really kind of a shocker the more I worked in the plant the more I realised those standards weren't exactly being met and the use of chemicals to make up for poor hygiene…It's also happening with pork and beef.”
There is also evidence that carcasses are washed several times to remove faeces, but the US tolerate some amounts of faeces and to kill disease-causing bacteria, producers spray the carcasses with a soup of toxic chemicals.
The US Food Safety Inspection Service maintains that chemical washes are a proven way of reducing foodborne illnesses but according to the latest figures on food poisoning rates in the US, there are over 2 million cases of salmonella and campylobacter diarrhoea in the United States each year.
Findings also reveal that around 14 of the chicken and 13 of the pork sampled have salmonella that's almost 10 times higher than in UK pork. 155,000 deaths are attributed to salmonella worldwide each year.
E coli is another pathogen found in more than 60 per cent of pork products. That's about six times more than in the UK. 70% of beef products, 80% of chicken products and over 90% of turkey products also carry E coli.
E coli is an indicator of faecal contamination and so, most of the meat from the US is contaminated with faeces and disease-causing pathogens.
This is the response from Professor Lance Price at George Washington University:
“I would say it's an unacceptable rate given that it is controllable but the industry has been very successful in fighting any kind of regulations there.
These are not poor Industries where they have plenty of resources that they could use to eliminate this problem or at least reduce the problem further I find it unacceptable.”
But contamination in American processing plants could be about to get even worse. The US government recently removed the limit on the speed of production lines in pork slaughterhouses. This means that it can achieve twice the speed of the fastest UK plants at over 1100-1400 head per hour while reducing the number of already inspectors from seven to three. They also do not have to be trained inspectors. This gives about 6 seconds to inspect an entire carcass by untrained employees and increases the risk of contamination in the meat because the inspection is not being properly done. It is no surprise that preliminary studies have shown a multitude of contamination breaches since the authorisation of unlimited line speeds.
Antibiotic overuse
We just established that US meat production methods lead to high levels of bacterial contamination but crowded and unsanitary facilities also lead to giving otherwise healthy animals antibiotics as a precautionary measure to preserve livestock.
In America, the rate of antibiotics given to livestock is five times higher per kilo than in the UK.
We know that overuse of antibiotics is the leading cause of the global spread of superbugs (all-drug-resistant bacteria).
“Scientists are worried that overuse of these drugs is causing a rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When you raise animals in crowded unsanitary conditions or you give them feed that they're not evolved to eat they get diseases and instead of changing the way we're producing the animals, we just give them antibiotics,” narrates Morland Sanders in the Channel 4 documentary.
We know that drug-resistant bacteria can infect other animals, contaminate the water system and enter our food chain and drinking water. We also know that drug-resistant bacteria can pass on their resistance to other bacteria, adding more to the problem. It also means that humans with benign infections are at risk of finding no antibiotic treatment and potentially dying from the absence of possible treatment.
Professor Lance Price has this to say: “We have unequivocal clear evidence that antibiotic use in animals leads to antibiotic-resistant infections in people despite the known risks. In 2018, US meat producers still used more than 11 million kilos of antibiotics, including six classed by the World Health Organisation as critically important to human medicine.”
I don’t eat meat, why should I be concerned?
Well, if you think that the US-UK trade deal won’t affect you, then think again.
A recent YouGov poll found that nearly three-quarters of us are concerned that a US trade deal would mean more pesticides in the food we eat.
So the concern is real and for good reasons.
When it comes to pesticide standards, the US allows much greater use of pesticides. American producers use almost 10 times more kilos of pesticides per hectare than in the UK. Many of those chemicals are also banned over here.
As a result, fruits and vegetables are also allowed to contain larger amounts of more toxic pesticides than in the UK. Most of those are known carcinogens. They also affect brain development in children and are recognised developmental or reproductive toxins.
Why is this unregulated?
Well, the American public is told that the chemicals used do not pose unreasonable risks to human health. The EPA, for example, an institution in charge to regulate pesticides in the US, claims that "the fruits and vegetables our children are eating are safer than ever.”
Agribusiness has enormous power over the United States Department of Agriculture and the government as a whole by means of political contributions.
According to recent figures exposed by the Channel 4 documentary, agri-businesses have spent more than 100 million dollars on campaign donations so far this year and they also have other ways of influencing government policy.
What can we do?
“If we do a trade deal with the US, your milk could contain 50 per cent more pus. Your bread biscuits could contain something called potassium bromate. Now, that's banned here because it may cause cancer. And, your Fizzy Pop could have something called brominated vegetable oil. Also not allowed here because it may cause nerve disorders.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in response to the documentary: “If a food additive is approved for use in the US, the FDA has concluded based on available science and proposed use information that it is safe for its intended use.”
While the UK government insists they are not going to lower our food standards, the past years’ events are proof that our government could not care less about our well-being and health. We also know that the trade deal comes with conditions. Conditions set by the US, such as following their standards. Otherwise, there is no deal!
One of the underlying issues here is that American meat, fruits and vegetables are produced in a way to maximise profit by cutting costs and preventing losses (by overuse of pesticides, chemicals and antibiotics). This means that UK farmers won’t be able to compete, and we run the risk of decimating British agriculture.
Minette Batters, head of the National Farmers Union, made the following statement: “if you look at the US they don't have those fundamental rules that we have here on welfare and Environmental Protection. If we do a trade deal with the US, we're importing meat that doesn't meet our standards.”
In response to the question about farmers and British standards, she replied: “Well, you will put our Farmers out of business. It’s not rocket science to work out that if you make Farmers produce to standards that are up here [high] and you allow imports in that don't have to produce to anywhere near those standards it's gonna really really decimate the British agriculture. I just don't see how we would compete.”
From history, many UK pig farmers went out of business, unable to compete with cheaper pork from abroad, because in 1999 the UK introduced a ban on sows being kept in individual crates but the rest of the EU didn't follow suit allowing European Farmers to produce cheaper pork. While the UK produce higher welfare standards, it also meant higher costs, until a decade ago the EU banned the use of crates. Now, the UK and the EU are using the same level of quality but pig production has fallen by nearly a fifth and the UK has lost almost a quarter of its pig farms. We can expect that if we do a trade deal that allows cheaper American food, history will repeat itself, and it is very unlikely that British agriculture will ever recover. Because, most consumers always chose the cheaper option, and if the price difference means better conditions for the animals, some will not want to pay the premium price.
Since 2017, almost three US-style mega-farms open each month to rival cheaper imported meat. By the end of 2022, there were 253 pigs and 1517 poultry mega-farms and we may end up with many more of those in the months to come, especially if a trade deal is signed. While the UK government pretends that it will not lower standards, what we see happening today is the complete opposite of what officials are saying…
David Hennig, a former UK trade negotiator, stated that “They are crystal clear. They say we want the UK to eliminate all the rules that keep US food out of the UK Market and that means allowing in your chlorine-washed chicken, your beef treated with growth hormones, your ractopamine pork and various other food besides. They want it all. They want all their food eligible to be sold in the UK.”
So, do you still think elected officials in line to sign a trade deal care about us?
Morland Sanders concluded by saying: “We repeatedly asked the government for an interview. They didn't make anyone available to speak to us but in their trade analysis. the government said the benefits of a deal could include better jobs, higher wages and cheaper consumer goods.”
So, here is our answer.
We need to stand up to the government and corrupt officials, because if the United Kingdom adopts the methods and dirty practices of American agriculture and follows American standards in general (which are for the most part inexistent, even the labelling of GMOs on food products is not compulsory in the US!), then we will become another nation made of mostly obese and sick people.
Because let’s face it, consumers will always watch their wallets, especially when the cost of living has never been so high.