Thread by @SamuelMarcLowe

I've been thinking about the UK's insistence that Chequers would not prevent an agreement with the US, nor accession to CPTPP, despite the fact it admits the common rule book for goods would limit its ability to make changes to regulations.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

This, on the face of it, is a big problem when it comes to the UK being able to negotiate these agreements because the US has a long list of regulatory demands (see page 155), particularly wrt food: ustr.gov/sites/default/…

My (informed) guess, is that the government thinks it can carve out enough space when it comes to labelling to avoid the issue. While it would not make changes domestically, it would allow imported food produced differently to enter so long as sufficiently labelled.

See WP:

Why would the EU agree to this?

The UK thinks it has found a precedent. Switzerland, despite having to apply the EU's food & plant hygiene regime domestically & in relation to imports has a carve-out allowing it to import meat produced using hormones.

trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/20…

Switzerland managed to negotiate this because the EU had lost a cast at the WTO on the issue, and Switzerland did not want to be dragged into the dispute.

Why doesn't this divergence lead to physical inspections at veterinary border inspection posts being needed on the Swiss-EU border? Well, imported hormone treated meat must be very heavily labelled.

See: fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsi…

Issues, as I see it:

- Far from clear EU would go for this again
- Domestic reaction. Swiss farmers don't seem to mind having to compete with producers that use methods unavailable to them (I assume because subsidised to eye balls); not clear British farmers would feel same way.