MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment
Secretary, commenting on warnings from the President of the
National Farmers Union on Sky this morning about the
'catastrophic' impact of a no deal Brexit, said:
“As the main representative body for UK farming has today said, a
no deal Brexit would be ‘catastrophic’ for British farming and
our food and drink industry - the largest manufacturing sector in
the UK.
“The prospect of British farmers being forced to needlessly
destroy sheep due to not being able to sell to European markets
in the event of no deal is a truly depressing and utterly
appalling scenario.
“Labour is calling on both Tory leadership candidates to
categorically rule out the prospect of a no deal Brexit that
stands to destroy British farming and seriously undermine British
food and agriculture standards.”
Ends
Notes to Editors
On Ridge on Sunday earlier today, NFU President Minette Batters
said:
“It would be socially and economically absolutely disastrous for
this sector
“If we take the sheep sector as one example, we have 15 million
breeding ewes in the United Kingdom, we are the second largest
producer of sheep meat in the world… For many years now we’ve
been exporting 40% of what we produce to France… In a no deal
situation you’re in a case where the tariff wall, you cannot get
over that tariff wall, you’ll be in over supply in our market
because you will still have, through the TRQ, the same amount of
New Zealand lamb coming in and potentially lamb coming in from
other areas. There is of course a tariff schedule out, but you
can’t get your lamb into the European market, that puts you into
over-supply. That means you will have many farmers going out of
business and indeed you would have to look at slaughtering quite
a large percentage of national sheep flock.”
https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1147792027767189504
