Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.
US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins finished a press conference in London where she said she would like to see the UK and the US more aligned on food standards regulation.
She also seemed to soften her stance on getting the UK to accept chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef from last week when she said US agriculture was being treated “very unfairly” by countries such as the UK and that she wanted the UK to accept “all meat” from the US.
Rollins told reporters the market is beginning to move away from hormone-treated beef, and that chlorine-washed chicken has almost entirely been removed from the US supply chain.
Asked about US beef producers phasing out hormones she said:
Our agriculture producers, our cattle producers etc, obviously are constantly watching what the markets look like, and if the markets are calling for a specific type, or they have more opportunity somewhere, then I think that we potentially do see some movement in the market.
Rollins added that she wanted the US, UK and other countries to have more regulatory alignment and similar standards for agriculture. She said:
One thing … I’ve taken from a lot of the discussions yesterday [when she met Steve Reed, the enviroment secretary] and today is that the more our two countries, and those who are aligned with our values, are regulatory aligned, meaning that we don’t have all these different systems and structures – I think that that is going to go a tremendously long way to supporting the agriculture industry.
Rollins also seemed to have softened her stance on asking the UK to accept chlorine chicken. She said:
Only about 5% of our chicken in America is actually treated that way, with the chlorine. So we have moved, over the last decade, completely away from the ‘chlorine chicken’. So that’s I think that’s a really important to dispel, and I’m very grateful to do that.
She also said that, although pork and poultry weren’t included in last week’s US-UK trade deal, they are at the top of the list for further discussions.
