A little hook in this morning's playbook for this article on whether the UK can ban products on animal welfare grounds. We can make this simpler in the first instance, the answer is "yes, but within limits". Unfortunately those limits are complex. politico.eu/article/brexit…
The UK definitely can't legally say, "we don't like the French, ban their food on any reason we can find". But we could for example make a case for banning foie gras if there was clear public support for such a regulation and it wasn't obviously discriminatory.
There once was an idea that a country absolutely couldn't ban a foodstuff based on the way it was produced under WTO rules, but that is seen as outdated by an increasing number of WTO specialists. Much would depend on the exact nature of the regulation proposed.
Ultimately though the reason the UK government doesn't want to go anywhere on restricting imports based on animal welfare is it thinks that will be terminal to a US trade deal. The WTO stuff is a plausible excuse, but it isn't the story.
See from last week at the International Trade Committee, there was no media pick-up, but this is an influential adviser to government suggesting the UK will probably have to accept hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken. 
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