British supermarket brand Waitrose has announced that it will never sell chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef, firing a warning to the UK government over alleged talks of a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.
The new boss of Waitrose, James Bailey, said in the latest issue of Waitrose Weekend magazine that the supermarket would never stock such products, backing calls to prevent the loosening of food standards under the potential trade agreement.
Bailey, who has been Waitrose’s executive director since April, said that the move to import chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef would be an “unacceptable backward step” and that it was “simply wrong” to import food from overseas that had been produced to a lower standard than currently allowed in the UK.
In the magazine, Bailey also backed the National Farmer’s Union (NFU), stating that a million people had signed their petition to ensure that food imported from countries such as the US to a lower welfare standard should not be allowed.
“We will never sell any Waitrose product that does not meet our own high standards,” he said, adding that “any regression from the standards we have pioneered for the last 30 years would be an unacceptable backwards step.
“It would be simply wrong to maintain high standards at home yet import food from overseas that has been produced to lower standards.
“We would be closing our eyes to a problem that exists in another part of the world and to animals who are out of our sight and our minds,” he continued.
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