Fury as government waters down post-Brexit food standards | Brexit

38 comments
  1. “In a version of the strategy leaked to the Guardian on Friday, the government committed to making it easier for countries to import goods if they have high animal welfare standards.

    The draft reads: “We will seek animal welfare-linked liberalisation in our [free trade agreements], allowing us to offer more generous liberalisation for products certified as meeting certain key animal welfare criteria specified in the agreement.”

    But the final version is stripped of this and merely commits to “considering” animal welfare and the environment when it comes to free trade agreements.

    Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton said: “This looks like yet another shamefully squandered opportunity to cement stringent animal welfare protection into our free trade agreements.

    “We need a full explanation from government as to why this element was removed, and on whose demands.”

    ​

    …what a shock.

  2. Wasn’t one of the “Leave” matras that there would never be an erosion of our food standards and it was unthinkable to suggest there might be?

  3. I’m sure there was some small doccument, leaked during the 2019 election that alluded to food standards being lowered.

  4. And guess which portion of society will suffer the most from poor food standards… thats right, the people who cannot afford to pay for the quality food, albeit when I say quality I mean of a quality that they would have been able to afford pre brexit.

  5. I’m starting to think that with everywhere in the world going like this… government promising, the slow killing off of the poors, loss of food resources, war, etc., … they figure the world is ending so the Rich Bastards are just going to gouge all of us while they watch the world burn because they have nothing to gain or lose.

  6. British politics is officially just satire of actual politics.

    “No of course we’re not going to lower the standards”

    “Ok…. Well let’s keep them, then”

    “Oh no, we couldn’t possibly. You see, it’s about our *perceived* submission to the EU – the most important thing here is that we *feel* like we’re strong and independent”.

    “Alright, so long as you don’t lower them”

    “We won’t!”

    6 months later….

    “We’re scrapping them. Not just lowering them but throwing them out completely. How does that benefit you? Can’t you see that my mates and donors having better profit margins benefits us all?

    And no, I don’t care about the children who’ll grow up with health problems, or all the other myriad problems which would be obvious if I just looked at the data from *every other country* with lower standards.
    Project Fear! You just don’t love this country enough!”

    The gaslighting of an entire nation continues.

  7. Why are we still surprised by the behaviour of this government?

    Well, I am surprised that when I think they can’t reach a new low, they somehow do.

  8. Considering it’s animal welfare we’re discussing, we could skip this whole drama by just going vegan. The standards before Brexit weren’t even great. People got upset when Kurt Zouma kicked his cat but in the UK over [80% of pigs](https://youtu.be/-7hAELEBjX4) are aversively gassed.

    If you care about animal welfare, this isn’t going to change anything.

  9. Is this the storm Parliament and drag the lying, cheating chancers out onto a funeral pyre kind of “fury” or rant about it on social media kind of “fury”?

  10. I wish the EU would create a labelling standard that has the EU flag prominently displayed for goods produced within the bloc – then I could seek those out easily and purchase them whilst avoiding upcoming dodgy imports and dodgy British made shite.

    The UK was key in shaping those food standards EU for decades. They’re what I grew up with, they’re what I trust and the fact the Tories think those standards are bad… well that makes me like them even more.

  11. Wasn’t that one of the points of Brexit? To get rid of the ‘red tape’ (which turns out includes regulation which is actually quite useful)

  12. “This is no ordinary chicken pie, this is an Iceland bleach and chicken pie…at least we think it’s probably chicken, it’s definitely bleach though”

  13. But we were told that chlorinated chicken and hormone-rich beef were just “Project Fear”.

    Are you suggesting that the Leavers lied to us? What a bunch of shithouses!

  14. Likely to make UK markets more accessible to the US, where their rules are far more liberal aka unsafe by European and British current standards. What do you expect from your choice of government?

  15. HAd lots of ready made legal standards in the EU, single nations had to adhere to. Did people really think we would leave and improve on those standards?

  16. We knew this was coming. There’s no point being furious, every second the Brexit pirates occupy our government, the further down this road we go.

  17. U.K. farmers already struggling to get their heads round the subsidy situation, government will also make it easier for shitty foreign food to be imported. I hope they recognise how badly they’ve been conned as they go out of business.

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