A short thread that led to a long debate aming trade geeks about the impact of trade agreements on food standards. But essentially under WTO and trade agreement rules you're on tricky ground as soon as you restrict products without scientific evidence
The UK faces the problem that the EU bans on hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken are not particularly scientifically based. In the case of the former, the WTO has ruled against the EU. We don't know what the UK will do on this post-March
Animal welfare scarcely features in trade agreements or at the WTO (see politicalanimal.org.uk/wp-content/upl…) so we can't justify bans in this way. Statements about not lowering food standards are meaningless - we need to work out how to navigate this area of complexity.
