Thread by @pmdfoster

A chart worth pondering as we contemplate pretty brazen attempt by the EU to put food and drink standards into the 'level playing field" part of the #Brexit talks /1

publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ld…

This is the key section - so basically if UK chicken farmers use battery techniques, say, or farmers use pesticides, or GMOs etc to cheapen production, that's undercutting the EU - and of course this reads across to coming UK-US deal. /2

So question for @SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK and others trade wonks.

1) If UK does trade deal with US and imports non-compliant US standard agri products, is that 'regression'? /3

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK And if UK did do a deal with US to accept US standards - what does that mean for 'facilitations' for UK agri exports to EU? More checks? Do we get a veterinary agreement a la New Zealand? /4

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK It's a pretty brazen play by the EU side, methinks.

@BorisJohnson says UK decisions will "be governed by science and not by mumbo-jumbo" but in practice, given importance of EU market, it may be muscle that makes the decision. /5

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK @BorisJohnson Can this position really be tenable?

French-demanded, we are told, but all other EU member states agreed.

The EU playing hardball at the outset. /6

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK @BorisJohnson Brexiteers deplying the German carmakers principle may ask whether or why the EU would cut it's nose off to spite its face, and risk hitting EU agri-exporters to the UK....but again, you hit the asymmetries. EU farmers have 26 adjacent markets to diversify into. And.../7

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK @BorisJohnson If push comes to shove, the EU will intervene in agriculture like nothing else to protect impacted producers....one eg always cited is EU internvention to buy Polish apples when the Kremlin banned them in retaliation for the post-Ukraine EU sanctions regime. /8

@SamuelMarcLowe @DavidHenigUK @BorisJohnson Not clear how far EU side will really push this - the Polish apple farmers were still pretty badly hit despite the EU support.

ft.com/content/a81283…

All 'mandates' aim high, and will be pared away through negotiation, but it's a pretty aggressive play at the outset /9ENDS.