In today's Guardian:

US trade deal would flood Britain with 'cheap, inhumanely produced' bacon


Trade deal would open door to meat containing banned growth promoters, from pigs kept in conditions banned in UK, industry leaders warn

Tom Levitt

The US meat lobby is “salivating” at the prospect of flooding the UK with bacon and pork produced using practices that are currently illegal in the UK, a top food expert has warned.

Gestation crates and the chemical growth hormone ractopamine – both banned in the UK – are regularly used in the US pig industry, which achieves the lowest costs of production in the world. Any future trade deal which includes accepting US pork could potentially have a disastrous impact on the UK’s pig industry as well as diluting our welfare standards, say both industry and campaigners.

Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Tim Lang, from City University, said the British public needed to “wake up” to the dangers of animal welfare being rolled back as the UK prepares to leave the EU.

“[The US] secretary of state for commerce has already made it clear EU standards must go if the UK wants trade deals. Did voters really want leaving the EU to mean taking us out of a powerful and – by global standards – progressive trade block, and into the clutches of US big food?”

In the US, the chemical ractopamine is fed to the majority of pigs as a growth promoter. There is evidence that it causes lameness, stiffness, trembling and shortness of breath in farm animals and its use has been banned in the EU since 1996.

A sow stall or gestation crate is a metal enclosure that holds the pig in a confined space during pregnancy. It is too small to allow the animal to turn around. It is legal in all but nine US states, none of which are major pig producers, and is used ostensibly to prevent larger pigs from taking food from smaller ones and to enable farmers to keep productivity higher.

However, the practice has been criticised for restricting the ability of animals to move or carry out natural behaviours such as rooting, and the UK was one of the first countries in the EU to ban its use in 1999.

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Hands up all those brexiteers who thought that this is what they were voting for. Well, I suppose that the inhumane US bacon will go nicely with my chlorine chicken traybake.