Animal Sentience and Post-Brexit Trade Deals: Conflicting Interests in UK Policy?

It is undeniable that current UK welfare standards are rated as considerably higher than many of our potential trading partners: the UK has an overall grade B under the Animal Protection Index (API), for example, while Australia has received a D. It’s a concerning difference for those championing animal welfare. Others, such as New Zealand, match current UK standards better – both they and much of Europe are a grade C. This is why Australia has hit the news when New Zealand hasn’t, even though the deals are being negotiated at the same time. It comes after a similar, long debate about a trade deal with the US, which uses multiple farming practices banned in Europe. Like Australia, the US has a grade D in the API. On protections for animals in farming specifically, both countries received an E; though the UK moves down to a D here, too. One grade still means a significant difference in practices. The RSPCA has highlighted things legal in Australia but not in the UK, including barren battery cages, sow stalls, hormone-fed beef, legal mulesing – the removal of skin and tails with metal shears – without pain relief (except in the state of Victoria), no requirement for abattoir CCTV and no plans to end live exports, with animals allowed to be transported without food or water in ‘intense heat’ for up to 48 hours. 

It’s the nature of the proposed deal with Australia that many in the farming and animal welfare communities are most concerned about. It focuses on reducing the cost of importing Australian animal products by introducing zero tariffs on increasing quotas over 15 years, and the argument is that UK farmers simply wouldn’t be able to compete with the low prices this would allow. Welfare standards aside, the sheer size of many Australian farms makes production, and therefore products, cheaper than British farmers say they can produce and sell at. In other words, they would be undercut – exactly what the government has promised won’t happen.

It would hit farmers who are using more sustainable methods especially hard; it isn’t just welfare standards that are higher in the UK but environmental ones, too, with intensive farming methods much more prevalent in Australia. Though Australia has made significant commitments to improving its farming carbon footprint (including being carbon neutral by 2030), there’s obviously a potentially significant carbon footprint attached to transporting food from the opposite side of the world. Alongside welfare implications, the World Wildlife Fund has pointed to environmental commitments that the deal with Australia could set back significantly.

Some have suggested that it won’t impact UK farmers too badly as long as there is transparent labelling so that consumers can make an informed choice. The government are arguing that deals like this will actually boost the UK farming industry as countries with growing middle classes, mainly in Asia, want to buy quality British produce and this would open up that market. And, of course, Australian farming is not a monolith – there are many farms that do adhere to higher welfare standards already. The BVA has suggested that tariff-free rules would need to only apply to those animal products that matched UK welfare standards. It’s not clear whether this is part of the plan or not but there has been word of ‘safeguards’ in official statements. Specifics of these have not been revealed. Instead, the government is saying that such details will be examined by the Trade and Agriculture Commission now that a deal has been agreed and that MPs will be able to vote it down if they consider it a bad deal. They are still insisting that standards won’t be lowered, nor British farmers undercut. This is definitely possible but would require specific and ‘meaningful safeguards’ like those suggested by the BVA; at present it is difficult to say how much protection will really be provided. It is not reassuring that lobbying bodies in Australia are saying the exact opposite: the chief executive of WoolProducers Australia, for example, has said they ‘will not support any FTA that required equivalency in animal welfare standards…there will be no regulatory barriers for Australian product on the grounds of animal welfare’.