New toxic trade deal threatens UK pesticide standards

In summer 2020, more than a million people signed petitions demanding that the UK Government protect food standards from a trade deal with Trump’s America. Led by farmers and celebrities, the uproar focussed on defending UK rules that prevent imports of chlorinated-chicken and hormone-fed beef.

However, little attention was paid to an equally concerning issue for British consumers – namely the major threat posed by trade deals to existing UK pesticide standards.

A year later and the furore over trade deals and food standards has largely died down, but the threat remains. As part of its attempts to pivot trade away from Europe, the UK Government has applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a huge trade deal between eleven countries, all with Pacific coasts.

But with a technical sounding name and no ‘bad guy’ like Trump to front it, the outrage from the media and public has all but disappeared. Meanwhile, like the US deal, CPTPP presents a considerable threat to UK food standards, including those designed to reduce harms caused by pesticides. 

Like most trade deals, CPTPP pushes for member countries to align their rules and regulations in order to make trade between them easier. While far from perfect, UK pesticide standards are some of the strongest in the world in terms of protecting human health and the environment. This means that UK safety limits for the amount of pesticides allowed to appear in food tend to be stricter than in CPTPP member countries, and a pesticide is more likely to be banned in the UK due to concerns over the harms it causes. 

While in an ideal world UK membership of CPTPP might force the eleven existing member countries to raise their pesticide standards, in reality trade deals tend to ‘align’ standards down. As a result, joining CPTPP could present a serious threat to the health of both UK consumers and wildlife. 

What are the risks for the environment?

The risks of joining CPTPP go beyond impacts to consumer health to also threaten the environment.

The UK currently takes a far more precautionary approach to which pesticides it decides to approve for use than any of the CPTPP member countries.

When a pesticide is banned for use in the UK, its residues are no longer allowed to appear in food. This prevents exporters from countries with weaker pesticide rules from selling produce on to the UK market. As a result, many of the UK’s future trading partners have much to gain by pressuring the UK to allow more toxic pesticides to be approved, and even to reverse existing bans. 

There are 119 pesticides allowed for use in one or more CPTPP member countries that have been banned in the UK for health or environmental reasons.

The list includes neonicotinoids which are notorious for driving massive declines in bee populations, but still permitted for use in all eleven CPTPP countries. 

What needs to happen?

The UK Government continues to present trade sovereignty as one of the key benefits of leaving the EU.

However, unlike in our bilateral trade negotiations with the USA, Australia or any other individual country, CPTPP is already finalised leaving the UK with almost no opportunity to change the terms of the agreement.

If the UK does go ahead to become the first non-Pacific member of CPTPP then it’s crucial that the Government finds a way to opt out of provisions that undermine our existing pesticide standards or reduce our ability to introduce new protections in the future. 

The UK Government has promised repeatedly that “it will not sign a trade deal that will compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards”. But, originally designed by the Obama Administration, CPTPP is a US-style trade deal posing many of the same threats to UK food standards as the Trump deal the British public opposed so vocally in 2020.

However, in contrast to last summer, there is no mass opposition to CPTPP enabling the Government to sign away our hard-won pesticide protections while nobody is watching.