President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal between the United States and United Kingdom on Thursday that would drop certain trade barriers between the two countries. Though the details are still fuzzy, some of the main industries involved are agriculture, the auto industry, and steel and aluminum.
“The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers,” said President Trump. “This is going to boost trade between and across our countries,” said Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “It’s going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs, opening market access.”
The optimism being projected by the two leaders was quickly dampened when the details of the deal were examined. One question in particular became central to the conversation: how will this impact the U.K.’s food safety standards, which are more stringent than America’s and have historically been a barrier to importing American agricultural products?
A BBC reporter asked Trump about this issue during the press conference.
“You mentioned meat and beef exports,” the reporter said. “The U.K. currently doesn’t accept American beef because of its own food standards. Are you calling on the U.K. to accept all American beef and chicken products?”
Trump responded that the United States has every classification there is, and the United Kingdom will take what they want. He also noted that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems intent on taking the United States in the direction of the British system, with “no chemical, no this, no that.”
Noticing the implication of the discussion—that America doesn’t have rigorous food safety standards—Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins quickly jumped in, insisting that American food products are quite safe. “To be very clear, American beef is the safest, the best quality, and the crown jewel of American agriculture for the world,” she said.
British politicians also went into damage control mode over the next day, stressing that nothing about this new trade agreement involves compromising British food standards.
“The rules on food standards have not changed and they will not change as a result of the deal,” said Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones.
The dilemma over food safety standards raises an awkward point for Starmer’s government. Ostensibly, their strict standards are based on clear scientific findings. Certain practices have been shown to be dangerous, and that’s why the government has banned them.
But then the obvious question is, if it’s so clear that these practices are dangerous, why hasn’t America banned them? British politicians posture as if this is settled science, because that’s how you justify these kinds of policies. But the fact that a large, developed country like America takes a different approach indicates that the supposed dangers of these practices are far from universally acknowledged.
The disagreement between America and the United Kingdom on what risk threshold is safe enough underscores how arbitrary these standards are. Governments are not simply looking at scientific evidence and then following obvious conclusions, as they would like us to believe. In many cases, they pick a certain risk threshold because it just feels right—or, more likely, because it’s politically advantageous.
The more fundamental point here is of course to question why the government should be making these decisions for us in the first place. A parent makes safety decisions for their child because the child is not old enough to understand the consequences of their choices. But paternalistically making decisions for one’s fellow adults “for their own good” is just insulting. I’ll decide for myself what risks I want to take with my food, thank you very much. What kind of society do we create when we are constantly meddling with our neighbours’ personal choices out of a self-righteous attempt to keep them safe? Not a free one, that’s for sure.
One final item that’s worth noting is that quality and safety standards act as a form of economic protectionism. As economist Murray Rothbard wrotes in Power & Market, “Another use of ‘safety regulations’ is to prevent geographic competition, i.e., to keep consumers from buying goods from efficient producers located in other geographical areas.” With this in mind, a cynical observer might be tempted to attribute the United Kingdom’s more rigorous standards to a relatively more powerful agricultural lobby, seeing as the domestic agriculture industry reaps financial benefits in proportion to the strictness of the standards.
But wouldn’t food become incredibly dangerous in the absence of government-mandated safety standards? Not at all. Voluntary certification agencies would almost certainly step in to provide assurances of quality and safety, just as they already do for thousands of other products.
The freedom to choose our own food should not scare us. What should scare us is politicians who want to tell us what we can and can’t eat.
