Brexit voters to blame for threat to high food standards – Yorkshire Post Letters

I READ of the tractor-borne protest in Northallerton (The Yorkshire Post, September 26) against the fear that post-Brexit Britain will allow inferior meat and produce to be imported whilst our home-produced foods will be banned from much of our current export market.

Farmers were quoted criticising the laissez-faire trade regime likely to be brought in by a Tory government desperate for trade deals and not naturally disposed to protectionism. I was left wondering how many of the protesters and their supporters voted to leave the EU and whether they realised, back in 2016, the inevitability of the choice of evils which now face us.

Being in the single market put us in a powerful bloc in which we were all able to maintain high food standards, protect our farming sector and allow controlled imports from developing countries whilst blocking sub-standard imported cheap food which would otherwise undercut our home-grown (i.e EU-grown) produce.

Agriculture has to be delicately balanced. It won’t be once we enter 2021. Farmers will demand protectionism and price support; the US will demand free access to the UK market for all their farmers; the public will demand their promised cheap food. All will be angry. Well done, Brexit voters. If only we could start again.

From: Jas Olak, Press Officer, Leeds for Europe, Leeds.

MARTIN Fletcher asks how pro-EU campaigners such as Leeds for Europe chair Richard Wilson might react if there was another referendum with the same result (The Yorkshire Post, September 25).

Let us have that vote, Mr Fletcher, to find out. That is what huge demonstrations last year were calling for. Not undeliverable and broken promises, dodgy campaign spending practices and suspected foreign interference.

Seven months after leaving the European Union, we still do not know what will replace the transitional arrangements ending in December. It will look nothing like what voters were promised in 2016 – of that, at least, we can be certain.

From: David Algar, Yeadon.

ONE should not be at all surprised over the legislative changes to the EU Withdrawal Agreement. Boris Johnson fails to embrace the seven principles eloquently laid out by Lord Nolan for ethical standards for those in public life – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson