Protect our food standards

If the Government does this, it will break a manifesto commitment to protect standards from trade deals. In Australia, farmers are permitted to:

• Remove skin from live sheep (mulesing)
• Use battery cages and sow stalls
• Wash chicken with chlorine
• Use growth hormones
• Use pesticides banned in the UK
• Use many times the amount of antibiotics in farming as the UK does

Trade deals that permit cheap, low standard imports could destroy the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and change our rural landscape forever.

Last year more than 2 million of you signed petitions calling for food standards to be protected in law but the Government ignored your voice. It chose instead to set up a permanent Trade and Agriculture Commission to measure the potential impact of trade deals. This is still not in place and yet the Government has agreed a deal with Australia which will lower our standards.

1. Why is the Government breaking a promise to the electorate?
2. Why is the Government ignoring the independent Commission which told them ‘no backsliding on standards’?
3. Why is the new Trade and Agriculture Commission not in place before the deal is agreed?

Please act now and email your MP to ask they stand against this trade deal, or any deal that lowers our standards.