The UK–US trade deal is being celebrated in Westminster as the first tangible post-Brexit win for a beleaguered trading nation. The UK–US trade deal explicitly includes agricultural and food products, lowering tariffs and increasing access for American exports such as beef, pork, poultry, dairy, and grains, meaning a greater volume of US food will enter the UK market. However, at the very same time, food safety in the United States, overseen predominantly by the Food and Drug Administration and The U.S. Department of Agriculture, is being dismantled. The UK, lacking the capacity to screen what enters our ports, is not prepared for this.
In March 2025, controversial US Health Secretary RFK Jr. laid off 3,500 FDA staff — nearly 20% of the agency — including over 170 inspectors from its Office of Inspections and Investigations (Aboulenein and Roy, 2025; Oversight Committee, 2025). The FDA was already critically understaffed, with just 443 inspectors covering more than 36,000 food facilities (Douglas and Polansek, 2025).
Additionally, RFK jr. has significantly weakened USDA food safety oversight. In March, he eliminated two scientific advisory panels—NACMCF and NACMPI—removing expert guidance on microbiological and meat safety. In May, USDA staff unions reported over 15,000 departures, including essential inspectors from The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), significantly impairing pathogenic outbreak response capability. In July, the USDA fired 70 foreign contract scientists at the Agricultural Research Service due to purported “security concerns” but announced these roles would remain vacant amid a hiring freeze, risking critical food safety research and pathogen monitoring.
At the FDA, there has been an immediate suspension of critical quality-control testing for food laboratories after losing key scientists, halting planned checks for glyphosate in barley and Cyclospora in spinach. Essential bird flu testing in dairy, amid escalating mammal-to-human transmission rates of the ongoing epidemic, in dairy has also been indefinitely paused (Douglas, 2025), leading to FDA food division chief Jim Jones resigning, calling the cuts “fruitless”.
This is not an internal crisis. The United States exports a massive 20% of its agricultural products globally, and a collapse in its inspection regime means unsafe food will not just be consumed in America, but will contaminate the supply chains of any country that accepts US produce, including the UK as part of its new trade deal.
One might hope the UK could intercept unsafe food slipping through the crumbling US system. However, it is not ready. Since Brexit, the UK has repeatedly delayed implementing full sanitary checks on agricultural imports, and British consumers have paid the price: For example, between 2020 and 2024, this lack of border inspections enabled salmonella-contaminated chicken from Poland to enter the UK poisoning “hundreds of people, including children”.
It was only late last year that the UK finally began phasing in its Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), a risk-based framework for food import checks. But enforcement still lags. Most UK border posts do not operate 24/7, and many lack on-site testing laboratories, forcing importers to ship food samples offshore for analysis. In 2024, 30 major food trade groups signed a public letter warning that port testing capacity was so limited that contaminants could go undetected. The Food Standards Agency’s chief scientist has acknowledged “diminishing laboratory capability” and raised concerns about whether the UK can properly screen high-risk goods.
The system is being exploited. Dover’s Port Health Authority reported that nearly 100 tonnes of illegal meat were seized in 2024, much of it untested, unregulated, and without required health certificates. Its chief, Lucy Manzano, warned MPs that “poor checks at the border [are] the gateway to potentially unsafe meat.”
Even legal imports may carry risks. Government monitoring has shown that imported produce is far more likely to contain pesticide residues from chemicals banned in the UK, including carcinogens and substances harmful to pollinators. In 2024, one study found 48 such unapproved pesticides on imported foods, compared to just 19 on domestic produce.
The conclusion is simple: Britain is opening its borders to more food from a country where inspections are collapsing, with a domestic border enforcement system that still cannot reliably screen what arrives. This is an invitation to a food safety crisis.
We LibDems are not anti-trade – free and fair trade is part of our DNA and a foundational principle of our party – but we are against signing away Britain’s food safety for the sake of desperate political symbolism. Until both our border enforcement and America’s inspection regime are meaningfully restored, this agreement should not proceed.
* Anders Larson is a Lib Dem member who has spent most of his life in the US and EU but is currently based in Norfolk.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The Joy of Six 1528
Endometriosis and acetylation
Reform makes first gain from Conservatives in this by-election cycle
How Chancellor Reeves torpedoed the economy
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Geoff Reid
Tom Bailey
Leonora Scipio
Kira Collins
Daniel Walker
11 Comments
Thank you for a much needed article!
Recent governments and, possibly, thé Civil Service havelet “our/their” country down badly and increasingly dangerously though the assumption/unstated policy that there is only one type of freedom ie “freedom to”when the reality is that “freedom from” is no less essential.
If, as is often assumed, H M G is there to protect and/or improve the life conditions of all its citizens, irrespective of wealth, power, status, age etc., might we have all our children free from hunger, the less well off free from homelessness and dangerous accommodation, regular citizens and their children free from avoidable harm resulting from underfunding and underhand privatisation of the N. H.S. and, in the latter case, the R. A. F.?
P.S. Why is our government colluding with an elected American regime which seeks to tariffly and/or militarily disrump countries which do not wish to be subordinate to it?
The government claimed recently the deal wouldn’t affect food safety here. I wish I were convinced of that.
I think they were desperate to get a deal to avert huge tariffs on industry, and glossed over the consequences.
Best we can hope is that US meat is labelled as such in supermarkets (if they choose to stock it), so we can avoid buying it.
Of course, that only affects legal imports.
When is the date that USA meat etc can enter the country for the 1st time? Then the country can start monitoring it.
Cassie, I too hope US meat imports will be labelled and avoided by the British public. More of a problem will be hidden hormone-injected meat included in school meals or other food outlets. I assume he likes of Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, etc will not be stupid enough to upset their customers by putting American meat on display.
@Andy Daer,
I agree the first target for cheap meat will be catering services, particularly those will very tight budgets. I expect “nutritionally” the US meat will be equivalent to UK meat, hence such organisations will simply substitute it to maintain “nutritional” benefit.
From what we have seen in other sectors, it should be assumed US business will ignore the rules even if they are found out (eg. US “AI” businesses total disregard for copyright), as paying the court fine (if it ever gets to court that can enforce payment) is either going to be cheaper or be many years in the future.
Notice how its all gone quiet about the silver bullet GM crops – perhaps it might be because reality is catching up with make believe…
Again, many thanks for a singularly important article because it addresses not only food safety but also the fundamental matter of how caring our governments have been, are and are likely to be for regular citizens and their children.
Below are two items which demonstrate how uncaring Neo-liberal governments are.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/21/social-housing/
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/21/why-has-inequality-grown-and-how-can-we-make-sure-that-the-rich-contribute/
What caring score between 0 -10 would you give the current government?
This article highlights huge problems ahead. I may be right that supermarkets with a high public profile will avoid the USA as a stated country of origin, but even that depends on the British public being aware of the low animal welfare standards cattle endure on American concrete ‘pastures’, fed, in some cases with soya-based feed sourced from destroyed rainforests) or the vast multi-storey pig-meat factories, not to mention the hormones and other chemicals used. This will create a price advantage which will severely challenge UK farmers, unless we choose (and are able) to boycott American imports.
The supply chain issues are another problem. We recently saw even top supermarkets caught out when tomato puree imported from Italy turned out not to be Italian, but was rebranded Chines puree, made with slave labour. It is not hard to imagine that with a big enough profit incentive, dealers will find ways to rebrand American food imports.
And that is not to mention that cafes and restaurants don’t have to put ‘country of origin’ on their menus.
Of course, implicit in the article and in the comments posted to date is the presumption that UK food standards for domestically grown/reared foods are both of a high-enough standard AND are enforced. Personally, I’m not confident about either of those.
@John Leach, we need to constantly improve standards in the UK, which, as you say, may not always be perfect, but at least we can try to do that, whereas we have no control over American farmers. However, our own farmers might want to be on a level playing field and seek to lower our standards, or ignore them, or in the worst case scenario, give up on livestock and go arable, because they can’t compete on price. In fact I met a farmer who’d done exactly that when I was canvassing in the 2024 general election.
Given that much of our food is bought in supermarkets and there is intense rivalry between them, I don’t understand what the concern is. The right to import is not the same as actually doing it. For this the importers must have routes to consumers. We should campaign for supermarkets to be more closely regulated and fined for breaches of food safety and lack of transparency.