Greg Smith MP: ‘British farming standards will not drop after Brexit’

I care passionately about British farming.

I want all our British farmers to succeed, to be prosperous, to keep putting the world class food we all eat and enjoy on the shelves for us to buy.

But to declare an interest, my love for our farmers also comes from the fact farming is in my family: my wife’s family are farmers.

READ MORE: £5.2billion programme set up to help towns such as Marlow be better prepared for flooding

It is from that passion I have for British farming that I wanted to set the record straight on the debate around food standards in the media at the moment.

The fact is, every single standard that applies today will continue to apply.

No one, literally no one, is proposing any diminution of these standards.

For example, the very same ban we have on hormone treated beef and chlorine washed chicken today, remains 100 per cent in place.

These protections are enshrined in British law, as they transfer from EU law to the UK statute book under the Withdrawal Agreement. Let me give you some detail.

The legislation preventing hormone treated beef is contained in EU legislation 2003/74/EC.

READ MORE: How tea with the Queen inspired married couple of more than 60 years to move house

On chlorinated chicken – retained EU law under Section 3 of the Withdrawal Agreement: Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 defines ‘potable water’ as water meeting the minimum requirements laid down in Directive 98/83/EC.

Anyone who says our food standards are not protected in law – or that the government will somehow sell out British farmers for trade deals – is simply wrong.

As ever, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We already have the Japan free trade agreement text, and guess what, there’s no lowering of food standards in there.

I remain certain, from everything Ministers have told me directly and committed to at the Dispatch Box of the House of Commons, there will be no lowering of our standards in any of the deals to come either.