British celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver is standing firm in his stance for U.K. food safety. With the U.K. discussing a possible trade agreement with the U.S. through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Oliver embarks to campaign against this partnership.
Oliver believes that the state of food safety in U.S. is so decidedly below the one established in the U.K., the traded products might cause problems to U.K. consumers. The increasing restrictions on growth hormones and pesticides in the U.K. are not rules that are followed by the Americans as of yet.
With his campaign, Oliver wishes to see that the food products imported from America meet the U.K. criteria. This ensures safety for the consumers and it will not jeopardise the already great standard of U.K. food safety.
Even U.S. organisations support Oliver’s belief. The U.S. nonprofit Centre for Food safety is an organisation that monitors food production technology and advocates healthy food. They state that the EU approaches food safety with a ‘better than sorry’ mentality whilst the U.S. adopts a ‘risk assessment’ approach – which looks mainly at costs for business versus potential harm of consumers and the environment. <
Oliver’s campaign, Stop TTIP, stands against the idea of ‘harmonisation’, where other countries in the past have just simply come to accept the lower levels of food safety of their trade agreement counterparts.
For more information, click here.
