Donald Trump has told Sir Keir Starmer that Britain must start selling chlorinated US chickens if it wants lower tariffs.
The US president has called for the concession after imposing a 10pc levy on goods from the UK to America, claiming that the UK’s restrictions on chlorine-washed poultry and hormone-treated beef were flawed.
After announcing a barrage of sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, the White House released a statement saying: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”
This formed part of Mr Trump’s narrative that America has been subject to unfair treatment from countries around the world, including the UK.
It listed Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit America’s ability to trade.
When asked about American meat-processing practices last year, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, said: “We’re not going to allow British farmers to be undercut by different rules and regulations in other countries.
“We opposed [allowing the imports] in the last parliament, and that won’t change.”
The debate over America’s chlorinated chickens has been revived after previously disrupting Britain’s attempt to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
The issue first came to the fore under Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, who promised farmers in 2023 that there would “be no chlorine-washed chicken and no hormone-treated beef on the UK market. Not now, not ever”.
The US argues that washing meat in chemicals reduces the risk from pathogens such as salmonella, while Europeans more typically say higher hygiene standards throughout the meat processing are preferable to cleaning up cuts with a chlorine rinse.
Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union, warned the Government last week against loosening the rules to placate Mr Trump.
“Absolutely no one wants to see hormone-treated beef, or pork or chicken treated with anti-microbial washes – which are banned here in the UK – sold on our market,” he said. “Those ways of production were banned in the 1980s and 90s for a reason.”
As for current trade across the Atlantic, most of Britain’s tariffs were lower than those charged by the US before the new 10pc border tax.
Last year, the average tax levied by the UK on imports from America was 0.9pc, compared to the 1.1pc typically charged on goods coming the other way, according to the World Trade Organisation.
However, that is not true for agricultural goods. As a legacy of the pre-Brexit era, border taxes on farm produce entering the UK average 9.2pc, more than three-times the US’s levies of 3pc.