One of the UK’s leading food fraud experts is warning that a trade deal with the US will result in imports of lower quality food that the British public doesn’t want. Professor Chris Elliott, founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, says that a trade deal after Brexit will mean accepting imports of food that is currently not sold in the UK because of current EU regulations. He warns that such foods will be vulnerable to mislabelling and food fraud.
What the BBC doesn’t emphasises is just how closely tied to the EU he is and how anti-Brexit he is as he scaremongers about it….
Prof Chris Elliott
@QUBFoodProfSir John Major states ‘Brexit will be a historic mistake’. Couldn’t put it better myself .
I still hope that the EU referendum result is a figment of my imagination, but as each day passes the horrible reality of what may happen becomes more and more real. All around the country, people, businesses and universities are all trying to work out what the implications are to their own lives and the functioning of their organisations.
It is my belief and hope that inside or outside the EU we will maintain the same degree of rigour in checking our food is safe and free from fraud. But like so many other issues around Brexit, we are jumping blindfolded by a Union Jack handkerchief into a shark-infested ocean.
I suppose the EU regulations and control stopped a massive EU wide horse meat food fraud from happening? Oh..no…It didn’t…funny how he fails to mention that on the programme…or anything about what he has been tweeting about so recently…illegal use of pesticides…the EU not stop that then?…
@QUBFoodProf @iffnmanchester I was invited to work on SANCO project on EU illegal pesticide trade. Declined as involved interviewing crims!
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Prof Chris Elliott
@QUBFoodProfPIckled beets turn up in Germany laced with illegal Rhodamine B industrail dye http://www.cleankids.de/2017/02/10/gesundheitsgefahr-rhodamin-b-in-sauer-eingelegte-rueben-von-tugra/63083 …
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Prof Chris Elliott
@QUBFoodProfUK Police warn about illegal pesticide use. Link to organised crime in parts of EU.Not here?
@iffnmanchester http://www.fifetoday.co.uk/news/police-warning-about-the-dangers-of-illegal-pesticides-1-4378088 …
He attacks the US for chlorine washed chicken…of course we”ve heard that peddled by BBC correspondents before, the chlorine is in very low dilutions and you probably go swimminbg regularly in chlorine filled pools, swallowing much of it. And yet you still live. He mentions growth hormones but has to admit that they pose no health risk…unless they are used incorrectly, a qualification you could add to any food stuff or product…not just imports from America.
It seems he is solely concerned in reality with anti-Brexit propaganda and the BBC welcomes him on with open arms of course.
I wonder, did he raise such objections when the EU were negotiating the TTIP trade agreement with the US when others were raising exactly the same concerns?
Concerns have also been raised that TTIP could lead to the erosion of protection offered to European regional food specialities.
Chlorine chicken, hormone beef? European fears over American ‘Frankenfood’ imports
TTIP trade deal could see poorly regulated American food hit British tables
So whether we have Brexit or not we could have the same trade deal problems..if that is what they are.
So nothing to do with Brexit then?
And never mind…
Leading European food safety authorities have determined that several US practices in contention — such as sanitizing poultry in lightly chlorinated water — are safe.
So nothing to do with food safety then?…
French President François Hollande has openly backed the trade deal. But in an interview with The Washington Post, Matthias Fekl, France’s new secretary of state for foreign trade, said he could not envision any deal that opens the door to controversial US foods.
“This is about lifestyle, about way of life,” Fekl said. “Nothing will force us to expand entry into Europe of chlorinated chicken or hormone beef.”
It’s really about paranoia, anti-Americanism and anti-Brexit alarmism.
@Alan if you add a time suffix to the web address you get a direct link to that point in the prog playt=35m22s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g2tyg#playt=35m22s
He talks about choice
Yet he is the one restricting the choice
He argues a meat pizza might contain GMO
Well first of all GM is safe , and no one in the litigious US has successfully sued for harm
Secondly a quick label saying “this product may contain GMO” is perfectly easy
All around the country, people, businesses and universities are all trying to work out what the implications are to their own lives and the functioning of their organisations.
I’m surprised that intelligent people, in universities etc, with high class degrees in Climate Change, Media studies and Cooking, are finding Brexit difficult to deal with.
My advice, go to M&S and get ready to eat meals.
Alan- you highlight one of the many consequences of distrusting the BBC because of its bias. If they interview some “expert” on some issue there is a need to do your own online research to find out what they actually are and who they take money from. Unless they go against BBC groupthink the interviewer won’t tell you . There are plenty of experts happy to sing the BBC song to get need invites when needed. Good for the cv!
The moment the BBC produce one of their pet “Experts” or guest “Spokesperson” my immediate reaction is to head for the web to check what their pet hobbyhorse is and invariably they are linked to some group or organisation which is in total agreement with the bBBC’s propaganda output.
Owen Paterson, as I recall, pointed out that we could not do anything about the horsemeat scandal because food safety was now an EU competence. (Rather amusingly, Mary Creagh didn’t understand this and thought he was talking about Incompetence.)
The food here in the US is often clearly labelled, and they seem to be very anti-GM (always bemuses me…why we think it’s ok to meddle with human embryos, but not crops) and concerned about what the chicken has eaten!! As you say, if you read the label. Also, we can always look it’s source, and buy British
The irony is the cheap chicken that’s available everywhere in the UK is not exactly organic free range.Much of it is imported from the Far East especially the cheap chicken shop variety.
Remember the horse meat fiasco .No one really knows what’s in our products imported from EU. Time we had a British supply chain and as few food imports as possible. Of course rich re moaners can afford the very best and don’t have to choose cheap food like many of us.
Why doesn’t the BBC show that all chicken in KFC is Halal ?
Shock, horror, chicken washed in chlorine. How terrible, how disgraceful. Strange how the bBBC goes off on one of it’s anti-capitalist, anti-big business, eco-freak rants about how ridiculous it is to drink bottled water and that we just drink ordinary, pure tap water which is just as good.
Well, guess what that ordinary, pure tap water contains? Yes, that’s right, CHLORINE. But shh, Don’t tell the bBBC that because they are obviously ignorant of the fact despite the fact we have been drinking it since the Victorians started the creation of out current system of water supply.
Why is it that we drink water polluted with the dreaded chlorine? It’s because it kills the bugs which often live in untreated water and cause such devastating diseases as cholera and the similar mass killers of bygone centuries.
This whole issue sounds far less like a case of worry over food safety and more like the usual debate killing hysteria whipped up by the Brussels Eurocracy as a distraction from what it is really engaging in, rampant protectionism.
“The BBC tells us [35 mins]…
‘Professor Chris Elliott, founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, says that a trade deal after Brexit will mean accepting imports of food that is currently not sold in the UK because of current EU regulations.’ “
What the BBC programme actually ’told us’ [35 mins]…
“The American Farm Bureau Federation, that’s the largest farming organisation in the US, has said that any trade deal after Brexit will depend on us accepting food imports from them.”
Your ‘quote’ is complete fiction. Something you ‘made up’ in order to give your argument some semblance of credibility.
An argument based on your own lie.