Summary
Ensuring the UK moves away from restrictive EU SPS requirements is likely to be central to the post-Brexit US-UK trade agreement negotiations. If the UK begins to move away from EU SPS and food safety control systems in relations with the US, this could open up new opportunities for ACP exporters whose market position is coming under increasing pressure from the EU’s new Plant Health Regulation, which is likely to come into force only after the UK is no longer part of the EU Customs Union and Single Market. While the citrus sector is the most obvious area where the ACP would have an interest in initiating dialogue with the UK over the SPS import requirements to be applied in the post Brexit period, a review of the UK’s Plant Health Information Portal suggests the initiation of an dialogue on the UK’s future SPS import requirements could prove useful in a range of other areas where increasingly strict EU wide import requirements are being imposed.
Following a fierce exchange over food safety standards between the US Ambassador and former UK agriculture Minister George Eustace it is clear the US government is not only determined to ‘make sure any trade deal between the UK and US has to include farming and farm products’ but also that food safety and SPS issue are an integral part of these negotiations (1). The nature of US objectives for the forthcoming bilateral US-UK trade talks in regard to agriculture, food safety and SPS issues was set out in the February 2019 summary of the US negotiating objectives in trade discussions with the UK. In this document the Office of the US Trade Representative sought to argue ‘multiple tariff and non-tariff barriers have challenged U.S. exporters in key sectors while the UK has been a Member State of the EU and therefore a part of the common trade policy of the EU’. Against this background the UK’s decision to leave the EU is seen as creating ‘new opportunity to expand and deepen the U.S.-UK trade relationship’ (2).
In regard to agricultural goods overall the US is looking to:
- ‘secure comprehensive market access for U.S. agricultural goods in the UK by reducing or eliminating tariffs’;
- ‘provide reasonable adjustment periods for U.S. import-sensitive agricultural products… before initiating tariff reduction negotiations’;
- ‘eliminate practices that unfairly decrease U.S. market access opportunities or distort agricultural markets to the detriment of the United States, including:
- Non-tariff barriers that discriminate against U.S. agricultural goods; and
- Restrictive rules in the administration of tariff rate quotas’.
- ‘promote greater regulatory compatibility to reduce burdens associated with unnecessary differences in regulations and standards’;
- ‘establish specific commitments for trade in products developed through agricultural biotechnologies’.
More specifically in the sphere of SPS regulations the US is looking to:
- ‘provide for enforceable and robust SPS obligations…with respect to science-based measures, good regulatory practice, import checks, equivalence, regionalization, certification, and risk analysis’, but with each party being able to set the ‘level of protection it believes to be appropriate to protect food safety and plant and animal health in a manner consistent with its international obligations’.
- ‘establish a mechanism to remove expeditiously unwarranted barriers that block the export of U.S. food and agricultural products in order to obtain more open, equitable, and reciprocal market access’;
- ‘establish rules that further encourage the adoption of international standards and strengthen implementation of the obligation to base SPS measures on science if the measure is more restrictive than the applicable international standard’.
- ‘establish new and enforceable rules to eliminate unjustified trade restrictions or unjustified commercial requirements (including unjustified labelling) that affect new technologies;
- ‘establish new and enforceable rules to ensure that science-based SPS measures are developed and implemented in a transparent, predictable, and non-discriminatory manner;
- ‘include strong provisions on transparency and public consultation that require the UK to publish drafts of regulations, allow stakeholders in other countries to provide comments on those drafts, and require authorities to address significant issues raised by stakeholders and explain how the final measure achieves the stated objectives;
- secure a ‘commitment that the UK will not foreclose export opportunities to the United States with respect to third-country export markets, including by requiring third countries to align with non-science based restrictions and requirements or to adopt SPS measures that are not based on ascertainable risk’;
- ‘improve communication, consultation, and cooperation between governments to share information and work together on SPS issues in a transparent manner, including on new technologies’;
- ‘establish an active SPS Chapter Committee that will discuss bilateral and third party SPS specific trade concerns, regulatory cooperation, and implementation of good regulatory practices’.
This provides the background to the ongoing debate in the UK government in regard to future UK food safety/SPS standards. The Environment Farming and Rural Affairs Minister Michael Gove is insisting ‘food and welfare standards will be maintained’, while the UK Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox, ‘has defended the safety of chlorine-washed chicken’ (1).
Speaking in May 2019 Liam Fox ‘declined to rule out allowing imports of chlorine washed chicken or beef raised using growth hormones into the UK after Brexit, insisting the issue is not one of food safety’. While he argued there could be no question of lowering UK production standards since high quality standards were the key to UK export success in the livestock sector (2), Secretary of State Fox appeared to leave open the issue of removing the existing EU ban on importing US chlorine washed chicken and hormone treated beef. He appeared to concur with the arguments deployed by the US Ambassador to the UK that consumption of such products should be left as a matter of consumer choice, rather than regulatory intervention.
This is despite the concerns publicly expressed by former UK agriculture Minister George Eustace that the US ‘should join the back of a queue for a post-Brexit trade deal if it thought its “backward” animal welfare and food safety standards would be accepted in Britain’.
| Comment and Analysis
With its references to expeditiously removing unwarranted barriers, and strengthening implementation of trade obligations in the light of science based SPS measures, the US government is de facto setting out an agenda for negotiations on the UK’s approach to SPS issues which would move the UK substantially away from the current EU framework for SPS controls. This would carry important implications for post Brexit UK/EU trade relations. It would also have knock on effects on ACP countries, in regard to the SPS terms and conditions of access to the UK market, competition on the UK market and displacement of UK and EU27 exports from the UK market to other 3rd country markets. These consequence would be most severe in livestock sectors and in regard to value added food products containing livestock products. However if the UK responds positively to the US position this could open the door for ACP exporters to seek a review of UK SPS controls in areas where the specific agro-climatic conditions make existing EU SPS controls determined on a pan-EU basis (which are becoming increasing strict) redundant. The most obvious example is the EU’s current controls on the fungal infection Citrus Black Spot (CBS), where the EC is coming under intense pressure from Spanish citrus producers to place even stricter controls on imports where Citrus Black Spot is detected in consignments landed in the EU (see epamonitoring.net article ‘South Africa-EU CBS Dispute Takes a New Twist’, 24 June 2019). The EU’s increasingly strict requirements are placing a growing commercial burden on ACP exporters, with smaller exporters being squeezed out of high value EU supply chains. This needs to be seen in the context of the citrus specific nature of this fungal infection, the absence of UK commercial citrus production and the absence of any threat to human health from CBS lesions on imported fruit. The costly SPS requirements which the UK is obliged to impose while part of an EU Customs Union and Single Market (i.e. while goods freely travel across the UK’s borders into other EU member states), would fall away were the UK to leave the EU Customs Union and Single Market. SPS import requirements for citrus fruit would then be a matter of national decision making in light of the agro-climatic conditions in the UK. As such these requirements could be removed without posing any threat to UK agriculture. This would then expand opportunities for export of citrus fruit from smaller ACP suppliers to the UK, such as Belize and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). This would provide potentially significant trade opportunities given the prospect of disruption of existing UK citrus imports from EU27 countries (notably Spain) under a ‘no-deal’ Brexit outcome to the current Brexit process. While Citrus Black Spot is the most obvious example, a review of the UK’s SPS control website (UK Plant Health Information Portal – https://planthealthportal.defra.gov.uk/) reveals that due to the agro-climatic conditions and patterns of production in the UK, the risk assessment for particular pests in the UK is lower than at the EU level. This arises from the fact that the EU has to formulate SPS requirements for the whole of the EU Customs Union and Single Market, taking into account the diverse patterns of production and agro-climatic conditions across all EU member states (see companion epamonitoring.net article ‘Ghanaian Pre-emptive Export Ban on Chilli Peppers, Aubergines and other Leafy Vegetables May Be Just the Beginning’, 4 July 2019). Once the UK is no longer part of the EU Customs Union and Single Market, SPS rules for imports where the UK itself has no export interest can be formulated solely on the basis of the agro-climatic conditions and patterns of production in the UK. While currently the UK is committed to continuing to implement EU SPS controls in the post-Brexit period, it is recognised a review of UK SPS controls may well be needed under individual UK trade agreements. Given the parameters the US has set out for the negotiation of a ‘UK only’ trade agreement, some revision of the UK’s SPS and food safety import requirements would appear to be necessary if a UK-US trade agreement is to be concluded in the post-Brexit period. If the UK begins to move away from EU SPS and food safety control systems in relations with the US, this could open up new opportunities for ACP exporters whose market position is coming under increasing pressure from the EU’s new Plant Health Regulation, which is likely to come into force only after the UK is no longer part of the EU Customs Union and Single Market. |
Sources:
(1) Guardian, ‘US ambassador dismisses UK criticisms over food standards’, 6 March 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/06/us-ambassador-dismisses-uk-criticism-over-food-standards
(2) Office of the US Trade Representative, ‘United States-United Kingdom Negotiations: Summary of Specific Negotiating Objectives’, February 2019,
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Summary_of_U.S.-UK_Negotiating_Objectives.pdf
(3) Foodnavigator.com, ‘UK Trade Secretary won’t rule out post-Brexit imports of chlorine chicken and hormone beef: ‘It’s not about food safety per se’, 16 May 2019
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2019/05/16/Liam-Fox-refuses-to-rule-out-imports-of-chlorine-washed-chicken