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.

  • Obinice@lemmy.worldEnglish
    391·
    11 hours 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
      17·
      8 hours 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
        8·
        4 hours 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?

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
          5·
          4 hours ago

          Yeah, your pricing power is far greater when you’re smaller, duh.

          Perfect example: any individual negotiating with a giant multinational.

    • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      95·
      7 hours 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·
        1 hour 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.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10·
        4 hours ago

        They banned it because they didn’t want poultry processors to get lazy about other hygiene practices.

        It’s often used to conceal the fact that the chicken is riddled with e. coli.

          • RunawayFixer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            44 minutes ago

            Chlorine washing doesn’t kill off all pathogens, it only suppresses them so that they no longer show up in standard tests. In other words, chlorine washing conceals the presence of pathogens.

            https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/13/science-on-safety-of-chlorinated-chicken-misunderstood "But the academics point to research published last year which found washing food in bleach does not kill many of the pathogens that cause food poisoning. Instead, it sends them into a “viable but non-culturable state”, which means they are not picked up in standard tests, which take a sample of the food and try to culture any germs on it.

            The presence of the pathogens is thus masked by the bleach, but they are still dangerous to human health.

            Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at Sussex University and co-author of the briefing, told the Guardian lives would be at stake if food based on these lower standards were sold in the UK. “I am satisfied [by the evidence] that US food poisoning cases are significantly higher than in the UK. A minority of people suffer fatal complications,” he said. “There will certainly be fatalities, and they typically affect vulnerable people, such as infants, small children and the elderly.”"