White House pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40891725

White House pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards

Donald Trump is demanding American chlorinated chicken be sold in British supermarkets.

The White House is pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards in order to revive a transatlantic tech partnership that drastically collapsed on Tuesday.

Jamieson Greer, the US trade envoy, wants Britain to accept hormone-treated chicken and beef, a term he was not able to achieve when the wider US-UK trade deal was first signed in May.

“He is seeking to use the tech partnership as leverage on trade deal concessions he still wants but that didn’t get the first round,” a source close to the negotiations told The Telegraph.

The US pulled the tech prosperity agreement over complaints Britain’s Online Safety Act would police American AI companies. Washington is using this complaint in order to secure fresh compromises in its trade deal with London, The Telegraph understands.

Insiders say the tech agreement collapsed in part because of the absence of an ambassador to Washington, a post which has remained vacant since Lord Mandelson was fired in September over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

  • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    73·
    20 days ago

    This was the promise of Brexit - no more of those pesky, overbearing EU safety regulations in exchange for trading deals with the devil for bad products that don’t come CLOSE to replacing what was lost.

  • potatopotato@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    60·
    20 days ago

    IIRC it’s not just hormones it’s bleached because we consider chicken with salmonella to still be fit for consumption. Our farming processes are so bad that we have to bleach the chicken to attempt to mitigate the hearth hazard.

    • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      89·
      20 days ago

      The USDA has banned hormones and steroids since the 50s and like 5% of chicken gets the (perfectly safe) chlorine rinse. European countries use the same rinse on leafy vegetables, they just banned it on poultry because they thought it would make processors complacent.

      • potatopotato@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        20 days ago

        You raise good points, though I think the issue stands that our processors and farmers are extremely complacent to the point of being negligent. I can’t exactly fault Europe for not wanting any part of that, they generally care much more about food quality than we do here.

        • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          20 days ago

          Regulations are only as good as their enforcement. The US has pretty good food safety laws (the discrepancies with the EU tend to be our “prove it’s bad” rather than “prove it’s not bad” stance on common-use ingredients and additives.) particularly with labeling. We don’t have fresh raw cheeses because we decided the best Brie wasn’t worth occasional listeria outbreaks.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        20 days ago

        Noooo we’re not looking for facts here, it’s a white supremicist corclejerk!

  • Obinice@lemmy.worldEnglish
    342·
    20 days ago

    America has been trying to get us to legalise their shitty chicken for years, fuck right off. We produce our own locally to a much higher standard.

    I’ll buy your Good & Plenty though, my gawd that tastes goooood

    • Schal330@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      20 days ago

      I’m not advocating for American chlorinated chicken, but I’m not sure our chicken is to a much higher standard. Over the last few years I’ve noticed a decline in the quality of our chicken from white striping to woody breast. I guess this is caused by them using breeds that grow quickly.

      • nogooduser@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        20 days ago

        Wait. No. That can’t be right.

        We were supposed to be able to get much better deals when we could negotiate our own. /s

        Honestly, I don’t understand how anyone fell for that line. How can a single country have more negotiating power than 28 countries including that single country?

    • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      106·
      20 days ago

      Only a small portion of US chicken gets the chlorine rinse, a practice that the EU recognized as perfectly safe by the way. They banned it because they didn’t want poultry processors to get lazy about other hygiene practices. They don’t import American chicken because the cost difference would destroy the local farms.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        20 days ago

        They don’t import American chicken because the cost difference would destroy the local farms.

        Surely the local farms can produce chickens cheaper than importing them across the Atlantic. I know we have cheap goods here, but not that cheap.

        • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          Had cheap goods. With the way our food costs have exploded in the last five years we almost certainly wouldn’t have leverage over local production.

          Ignoring that, the behavior that protectionist trade laws are avoiding is: Country A using tax subsidies to artifically deflate the cost of a good, flooding the market of Country B where it isn’t subsidized and eventually putting the producers there out of business so they become reliant on trade with Country A. Protectionism like this isn’t wrong, but people generally don’t like being told that they’re being barred from less expensive options so it gets dressed up in nationalism.

    • Pyr@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      I’m Canadian and live close to the border. Growing up my mother would always cross into the states to pick up cheap food like chicken, cheese, milk, etc.

      I could ALWAYS tell if it was American chicken we were eating for dinner… Always had an off-putting taste to it.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    19 days ago

    If you want cheap chickens and eggs for billions of humans, factory farming is a necessity. If you factory farm, there has to be a safe level of salmonella allowed, or nuke the whole facility over any infection. Also, if you factory farm, there will be wild price swings in chicken and eggs as factories are nuked for bird flu infections.

    But we have choices!

    a) Cook your fucking chicken and eggs.

    b) Don’t eat chicken or eggs.

    c) Grow your own.

    And for my British friends:

    d) Boycott American chicken.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    20 days ago

    The Red Coats should tell MAGA to shove it where the sun does not shine. If the UK allows sub-standard meat into their market, be sure to educate the consumers about it.

  • cheesybuddha@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    19 days ago

    I don’t think the Trump admin knows anyone who isn’t associated with Epstein, so they can’t really fill the vacancy

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    13 days ago

    LOL. “Eat shit, once Great Britain”.

    “At least we’re not forced by Brussels to eat healthy delicious food”