UK trade – an overview

The UK is at a turning point in its international trading relationships, and this poses both risks and opportunities for animal welfare.

On this page, you can find out the latest situation, what is at stake, and what Compassion's campaigners and supporters are doing to help protect farm animal welfare in new UK Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

Why is trade an issue now?

As a result of the UK leaving the European Union (EU), the country is now able to set its own trade policy for the first time in almost 50 years. Previously these policies were determined at EU level, although the UK was involved in decision-making, alongside the other Member States.

Setting trade policy includes determining rules on which food products can be imported. And, whilst the UK's farming standards could certainly be improved, its legal baselines are higher than most other countries.

What are the choices facing the UK?

Since leaving the EU, the UK has two options:

1. HM Government could choose to require certain products to meet UK legal standards in order for them to be imported. This would prevent UK farmers from being undercut, and leave open the possibility of further improving domestic animal welfare legislation.
2. Alternatively, the UK could opt to lower the bar for imported products, increasing pressure to lower domestic standards, and potentially taking the country into a 'race to the bottom', where it seeks to compete only on price rather than food quality and animal welfare.

The choice the Government makes could have a more significant impact on the UK's standards of animal welfare, food safety, and environmental protection than its decisions in any other single policy area. And the ramifications could be felt for decades to come.

The Government's approach will help determine the food UK citizens eat; affect the livelihoods of higher welfare farmers within the UK; and, crucially, influence the wellbeing of animals throughout the UK and beyond.

Is Northern Ireland a Special Case?

Yes. The Northern Ireland Protocol means that Northern Ireland remains subject to European Union trading rules – particularly in terms of animals and food products – and therefore outside any other arrangements that are made for Britain. This means Northern Irish consumers, farmers and animals will be affected by future EU decisions on animal welfare but may be less impacted by the risks and opportunities of new UK FTAs – although details of how this will work remain to be clarified.

What is the UK Government's position?

The UK Government has repeatedly said the country will not see its animal welfare standards diluted on departure from the EU.

Indeed, when Michael Gove was Defra Secretary of State, he committed to the UK being a global leader on animal welfare. And the 2019 Conservative Manifesto stated: "In all our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare, and food standards."

What is more, in February 2021, the Secretary of State for International Trade restated this promise in the House of Commons. Liz Truss said: "I have been very clear that in every trade deal we sign, we will not lower our excellent standards... and we will not expose our farmers to unfair competition."

These commitments were most welcome. However, as things stand, the Government's actions on trade have done more to undermine than support this pledge to uphold UK standards.

Tariffs

The Government has proposed using 'dual tariffs' as a means of protecting animal welfare and environmental standards. Tariffs are effectively taxes that are placed on goods entering a market. The Government's proposal would involve charging higher import tariffs for products that don't meet UK standards and a lower rate for those that do.

However, tariffs should be one of a host of mechanisms used to protect standards, not the only one. Not least because they are a starting point, rather than an endpoint, for any trade negotiations. Once the principle has been accepted that low welfare, low quality food can be imported, even with a high tariff, there will be steady pressure to reduce the tariff over time.

The solution to this situation would be legislation that prevents certain products from being imported under the terms of any FTA – but the UK Government has resisted legal measures at every turn.

Legislation

Two new pieces of legislation with a direct impact upon UK farming and animal welfare have recently passed through Parliament. These offered the Government an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to protecting UK standards in trade deals. However, they repeatedly blocked attempts to ensure that the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Trade Act 2021 provided sufficient protection for the UK's higher welfare farmers or its animals.

The Agriculture Act...

Replaces the EU's area-based farming subsidy scheme (the Common Agricultural Policy) with payments for farmers who deliver on issues such as animal welfare and the environment – a shift in priorities welcomed by Compassion.

However, there is a major risk that the benefits of this new approach will be entirely undermined by future trade deals because, due to Government resistance, the same Act does not require food imports to meet UK legal standards.

Under pressure from campaigners, including Compassion, the Government did offer Parliament a modest increase in its scrutiny of trade agreements. As a result, the Act requires the Government to report on whether, or to what extent, a new FTA undermines UK animal welfare, food, and environmental standards.

But, whilst this is a step in the right direction, it does not offer the same safeguards as a legal prohibition of imports of products not raised to UK standards. Indeed, it suggests the Government can permit those imports and then merely submit a report to Parliament stating why it has chosen to do so.

The Trade Act...

Focuses more on rolling over FTAs that the UK was party to because of prior EU membership.

This Act also offered the opportunity to secure protections against lower standard imports. It could have ensured that Parliament was fully involved in setting out the negotiating position, scrutinising and then ratifying FTAs. But, again, this was opposed by the Government.

There was, once more, some modest progress in terms of scrutiny. In this case, the Government offered two minimal concessions during the last stages of the debate. It promised:

• An increased role for parliamentary committees before negotiations: Where a relevant committee has sought a debate on a new deal's negotiation objectives, a debate for Lords (but not MPs) will be provided.
• Debates for both Houses after negotiations: These will be provided, within the existing 21 sitting day scrutiny period, if requested by committees.

The Government has also placed the independent Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC), which will review FTAs, on a statutory footing (to be reviewed every three years). But, whilst this is a welcome step, it appears that the membership of the Committee – particularly in the areas of animal welfare, food, and the environment – will remain narrow and be composed predominantly of farming bodies.

Additionally, the new TAC has yet to be established, and the Department for International Trade has yet to respond to the recommendations of the original Commission (published in early March 2021). Yet, the Department continues to negotiate, and even agree, FTAs in the absence of the scrutiny the Government promised. 

Meanwhile, following lobbying by Compassion and other organisations, the House of Lords twice voted in support of an amendment to the Trade Bill that would have required food imports to meet UK standards. However, this amendment was twice overturned by the Government in the House of Commons.

In sum, despite pledging to protect UK animal welfare standards in trade deals, the Government has repeatedly refused to introduce legal protection for animals, farmers, and consumers against lower standard imports, and resisted thorough, meaningful scrutiny of FTAs.

What is Compassion calling for?

Compassion is working, through both public campaigning and political lobbying, to speak up for animals at this pivotal moment in the UK's international trading relationships.

Our goal is to ensure the country seizes the opportunities, and avoids the risks, presented by new trade agreements, in order to maintain and improve animal welfare.

Our basic position is that, when negotiating FTAs, the UK must not permit the import of meat, eggs and dairy products that are produced to lower animal welfare standards than those of the UK.

Legislation

The UK has a considerable body of legislation on the welfare of farm animals. Many of the countries with which the UK is seeking an FTA do not. Indeed, in some cases, they have almost none.

We believe the UK should resist calls for 'regulatory coherence' with countries that have lower welfare standards. Not least because, when there are no regulations to align with, 'coherence' is likely to mean a race to the bottom. If nations with lower standards seek a level playing field, it will make it very difficult for the UK to adopt good new legislation on farm animal welfare, and may well create pressure on the UK to dilute its existing standards.

Compassion therefore worked tirelessly to try to ensure that the Agriculture Bill and Trade Bill protected animals.

Compassion representatives gave evidence to Parliamentary Committees, engaged with individual MPs and members of the House of Lords, and provided briefings as the Bills proceeded through Parliament.

As a result, important amendments were tabled to both Bills. These amendments would have prevented the Government from striking FTAs that permitted the import of products from animals reared to lower standards than those of the UK.

Compassion supporters also lobbied their MPs to vote in support of these amendments, and 77,000 people signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, demanding that animal welfare standards be protected in law.

However, despite strong cross-party support for legal protection for animals, farmers and consumers – and positive votes in the House of Lords – the Government ultimately voted down all amendments on food import standards to both the Agriculture and Trade Bills.

As a result, higher welfare British farmers and their animals remain inadequately protected by legislation from the threat of competition from lower welfare imports.

Tariffs

Compassion is opposed to tariffs on lower welfare goods as the only means of protecting animals, farmers and consumers because:

• It is difficult to ensure that any tariff is sufficiently high to effectively keep a product permanently off the supermarket shelves.
• There is likely to be pressure to remove or reduce tariffs during FTA negotiations. A point demonstrated very clearly in recent negotiations with Australia.
• Parliament has no mechanism to challenge the tariffs that the executive lodges with the World Trade Organization (or amendments by the Government to existing tariffs). So, over a period of time, the Government could choose to gradually reduce these tariffs – potentially to zero. This, of course, would then offer no protection against low standard imports.

FTA negotiations

In the absence of robust legislation, and the inadequacy of a tariff-based approach to protecting UK standards, our attention must turn to individual trade negotiations.

We are therefore urging the UK Government to insist on the inclusion of a clause in each FTA, requiring imports to meet UK animal welfare standards.

Such clauses are likely to meet with resistance – particularly from negotiators in countries with large agricultural industries. However, we believe the UK should treat this as a red line in all trade negotiations, to ensure that any FTA does not put downward pressure on existing UK standards and supports opportunities for the UK to improve its animal welfare in future.

Scrutiny

Modern trade agreements affect huge swathes of public policy, including food standards and animal welfare. So, it is critical that trade deals are developed with democratic support and that MPs have the power to scrutinise and vote on trade agreements.

Compassion has therefore been calling for Parliament to be given greater oversight of the way trade agreements are negotiated and ratified. Yet, despite a number of amendments to the Trade Bill that called on the Government to improve scrutiny of trade negotiations, they made only minor concessions, and have resisted all attempts to give Parliament a meaningful say in UK trade policy.

As a result, Parliamentarians currently have no say in setting the negotiating objectives for any FTAs. Plus, the role of Parliament in monitoring trade negotiations is extremely limited, as is their power to reject an FTA.

This absence of parliamentary influence makes public scrutiny all the more important, and we will be following each FTA negotiation, every step of the way.

Your support

We will continue to lobby parliament as each FTA is negotiated, and to call for ongoing public support in the fight to protect farm animals. In the meantime, we would like to thank everyone who has taken a stand in this campaign so far.

Firstly, a huge thank you to to the amazing 77,000 people who signed our open letter to the Prime Minister, calling on him to protect animal welfare in trade deals.

The signatories to the letter included high profile supporters like Emma Milne, fellow vets Marc Abraham and James Greenwood, actors Mike Beckingham and Emma Kennedy, and Compassion patrons Jerome Flynn and Deborah Meaden.

On Tuesday 8th December 2020 we held a virtual event featuring MPs, Emma Milne, and Compassion volunteers, to honour all those who signed and to send a united message to the Government: the UK must not import cruelty.

You can watch the recording of the event on YouTube.

Additionally, Compassion's dedicated army of supporters has backed the call for legislation to protect animal welfare at every opportunity. Over 18,000 emails were sent to MPs about the Agriculture Bill and a further 17,000 emails were sent on the wider issue of animal welfare standards in trade deals.

These actions have helped to keep the issue of FTAs in the public eye and on political agendas throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They also helped to convince many MPs to support stronger measures against low welfare imports and to identify clear champions for the defence of animal welfare standards in Parliament.

Keep an eye on this page for actions you can take as trade agreements are struck, to help protect farm animals and stop a race to the bottom on standards.