Catherine McBride – Written evidence (DYN0071)

The evidence session on May 19th was held to review the Government's proposal to dynamically align the UK with the EU’s SPS area. The scope of this alignment covers not just sanitary and phytosanitary regulations but also food safety and general consumer protection rules applicable to the production, distribution and consumption of agrifood products, the regulation of live animals and pesticides, the rules on organic production and labelling of organic products, as well as marketing standards applicable to certain sectors or products.[1] The aim of this proposal is for ‘the vast majority of movements of animals, animal products, plants, and plant products between Great Britain and the Union being undertaken without the certificates or controls that are currently required or expected.’[2]

I believe that Dynamic alignment with the EU’s SPS area is unnecessary, expensive and potentially very dangerous for the UK’s livestock farming for the following reasons:

1. Background and context of the UK proposal to align dynamically with EU food and agriculture legislation.

SPS alignment is unnecessary because the UK’s entire Food and Live animal exports to the EU were only £12 billion in 2025.[3] This was just 0.4% of the UK’s GDP of £3,037 billion in 2025[4] and only 1.3% of total UK exports.

Most UK food production is consumed domestically, and an additional 35% of the food consumed in the UK must be imported.[5] The UK does not even fully supply its domestic market for indigenous foods, those that can be grown in the UK climate, imports of indigenous foods vary from 20% to 25% depending on domestic yields. Consequently, the UK does not have much surplus food to export to the EU.

The UK is a major importer of food, and the EU is one of its major suppliers. This has continued since Brexit without the need for regulatory alignment. Consequently, the supposed benefits of this proposal will be very small. The UK does not have the capacity to increase its food production in order to reap any benefits that certificate free trade could produce. All that regulatory alignment would achieve is to shift the private costs of exporters onto the public purse.

2. Potential savings from dynamic alignment

The UK’s Reset negotiator, Nick Thomas Symonds MP, has claimed that UK agrifood exporters to the EU have spent just £210 million on paperwork over the three years from 2023 to 2025. This is only £70 million annually and a tiny fraction, just 0.6%, of the UK’s annual agrifood exports, which are in turn a tiny fraction of the UK’s total exports. Dynamic alignment with the EU’s SPS regulations will only reduce this paperwork by a small amount.[6] But the UK will be asked to pay 10 times this amount for EU SPS area access.

3. Paying for EU dynamic alignment

Dynamic alignment will not be free. The UK will be asked to contribute to the EU’s Cohesion Fund as the EEA and EFTA countries do in return for access to the EU market.

During the 2021-2028 EU budget period, Norway will contribute €3.17 billion to the EU’s Cohesion Fund for access to the EU SPS area. This is equivalent to approximately €453 million (£385 million) per year. Norway also contributes between €400 million and €500 million annually to other EU programs. Its total annual contribution to the EU is between €850 million and €950 million. Norway exports approximately €7.4 billion in agrifood goods to the EU, predominantly seafood, and imports agrifood worth around €6 billion from the EU, which accounts for about 64% of Norway’s total agricultural imports. Norway does not pay to access the EU’s ETS and CBAM, as it has been a full participant in the EU ETS scheme since 2008.

However, the UK could be asked to pay much more than Norway for SPS access, as the UK exports more to the EU: in 2024, UK SITC 0 Food and Live Animal exports to the EU, measured in current prices, were £11.35 billion, equivalent to about €12.84 billion and 74% more than Norwegian agri-food exports. Therefore, the EU would likely require an annual payment of £690 million to access its SPS system. Dwarfing any potential gains.’[7]

4. The UK’s booming Agtech sector could disappear under EU regulations

By being outside the EU and by not following EU regulations, the UK has developed a growing industry in agricultural technology. There are almost 2,500 companies employing over 56,000 people in the UK Agtech sector. The sector is worth roughly £28.4 billion, which is more than double the UK’s total Food and live animal exports to the EU. The Agtech sector covers farming efficiency, sustainability and biotechnology.  The UK has the potential to develop new crops and export them around the world, but if we adopt dynamic alignment with the EU, we may find that UK farmers are prevented from benefiting from these developments. The CJEU found in July 2018 that genetically edited plants and animals should be treated as GMOs.[8] Defra believes that GMOs will be in scope of SPS alignment.

5. Influence in EU decisions

The European Commission, Council Decision, Register of Commission Documents - COM(2025)408, main document, Section 5.1 paragraph 2, clearly states that the agreement does not give the UK the right to participate in the [EU’s] decision-making, while paragraph 3 states that the agreement provides an obligation for the UK to dynamically align to EU legislation and that regulation should be applied simultaneously.

We have seen that even when it was a member of the EU, the UK had little influence in the Union’s agricultural decision-making. An example is the EU’s restriction on UK beef exports to the EU for about 10 years after the BSE crisis was over; although the UK was a member of the EU, it had no ability to influence EU SPS regulations.[9]

Dynamic alignment means all UK Food and Agriculture regulations will be EU law, and therefore all of them will fall under the ECJ's jurisdiction. Again I refer to the Council Decisions, Register of Commission Documents - COM(2025)408, main Document, Section 5.1, paragraphs 4 and 5: ‘the Court of Justice of the European Union is the ultimate authority for all questions of European Union law, with possibilities for appropriate measures to protect the Union interests in case of non-compliance with the agreements.’

The UK is aligning with the EU’s regulations. The EU has published what this would mean: Section 5.1 Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 are reproduced below; they clearly explain this:

‘2. Neither agreement should give the United Kingdom the right to participate in the Union's decision-making. However, the United Kingdom should be involved at an early stage and contribute appropriately for a country that is not a member of the European Union to the decision-shaping process of European Union legal acts in the fields covered by the obligation to dynamically align and simultaneously apply. The European Commission should consult the United Kingdom at an early stage of policy-making. These rights would not extend to participation in the work of the Council or its preparatory bodies.’

‘3. Both agreements should provide for an obligation for the United Kingdom to dynamically align to the relevant Union legislation. The principle of dynamic alignment should ensure that identical rules within the scope of the agreement are simultaneously applied.’

‘4. Both agreements should ensure uniform interpretation and application of Union law on the basis of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union; in particular, the interpretation given to the applicable rules within the Union should also apply in the context of the relations between the Parties.’ [10]

6. Dynamic Alignment means identical rules applied simultaneously

Register of Commission Documents - COM(2025)408 Section 5.1, paragraph 3: ‘The principle of dynamic alignment should ensure that identical rules within the scope of the agreement are simultaneously applied.’ [my emphasis]

7. The disease risk associated with a common SPS Area

The European Commission’s Explanatory Memorandum, dated 16 July 2025, clearly explains that the current proposal of a common SPS Area and dynamic alignment:  

‘would result in the vast majority of movements of animals, animal products, plants, and plant products between Great Britain and the Union being undertaken without the certificates or controls that are currently required or expected.’[1] 

Removing border controls and creating a common SPS area between Great Britain and the continental EU would be extremely dangerous for UK animal-based agriculture. The UK has a climate where Foot and Mouth Disease thrives in the type of animals most commonly kept on UK farms.

In January 2025, a Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak started in Germany, by February it was in Hungary and by March it was in Slovakia – despite EU regulations this disease easily spread across EU borders affecting more animals as it spread: Brandenburg, Germany, 14 animals; Kisbajcs, Hungary, 1,400 dairy cattle; Hungary, second farm, 3000 animals; Gyor-Sopron, Hungary 1000 cattle; Gyor-Sopron, Hungary, 2,500 animals; Bratislavsky, Slovakia; Trnavsky, Slovakia; and Nitriansky Slovakia; Slovakia’s multiple outbreaks involved approximately 10,000 animals.[11] Foot and Mouth Disease reached Cyprus in February 2026 and reached Greece in March 2026.[12]

The last outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK was in 2007, almost 20 years ago. It infected 60 animals and was over within 3 months. The best way to avoid new FMD outbreaks is to prevent trade with countries that have or could have FMD. This is why DEFRA’s restrictions on meat and dairy imports from Germany, Hungary and Slovakia in 2025, which all had outbreaks, also applied to Austria, which did not have FMD but borders the other three countries. Similarly, Defra’s ban on non-commercial imports extends to EFTA countries, Greenland and the Faroe Islands because they trade with the EU.  

The UK does not have similar restrictions on its non-EU agricultural trading partners, which Defra does not list as having FMD.[2] Both Australia and New Zealand, which export meat and dairy products to the UK, are FMD-Free. North America, Central America and the Caribbean are officially recognised as FMD-free by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). There have been no cases of FMD in the Mercosur countries since 2013, when Venezuela had an outbreak. As of 2020, 98.6% of South America’s cattle population was officially recognised as FMD-free by the WOAH due to a vaccination program. The region is working towards full eradication. The only CPTPP country to have had a recent FMD outbreak is Malaysia, but the UK has never imported any dairy products or any beef, pork or sheep meat from Malaysia. Nor are we proposing to drop our border controls with them. 

The UK has never had an outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF). However, ASF outbreaks have been ongoing in the EU since 2017, when they first appeared in domestic pigs in Romania. Romania has had 72 outbreaks so far this year in domestic pigs, 478 in 2025, 213 in 2024, and 533 in 2023. Other EU countries with ASF outbreaks in domestic pigs since 2023 include Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, and Poland. EU countries with outbreaks in their Wild boar populations are Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

The WOAH and Defra in the UK have been monitoring the EU’s outbreak of African Swine Fever, as I mentioned in my evidence.[13] The WOAH records the number of outbreaks but not the number of animals infected. The UK’s National Pig Association reports that an outbreak in Estonia in 2025 occurred on the country’s largest pig farm and resulted in the culling of 28,500 pigs. According to WOAH, there have been no months without outbreaks in either domestic pigs or wild boar in Europe between January 2023 and April 2026. 

Only 2 CPTPP countries have had cases of ASF during the last 5 years. Malaysia experienced an outbreak in 2021, which it controlled through quarantine, culling, and tighter biosecurity measures. Vietnam is the only CPTPP country to have had an ASF outbreak during the last 5 years that was anywhere close to those in the EU.

The BBC reported in 2025 that Dover Port Health Authority had confiscated 100 tonnes of diseased meat in 868 separate consignments.[14] This was during a period when the UK required any meat, dairy, fish or eggs from the EU to have full third-country SPS paperwork: Export Health Certificates; Customs Declarations; Pre-notification on the UK’s Import of Products, Animals, Food and Feed Systems (IPAFFS); and routine SPS border checks by Port Health Authorities of documents, identity and physical checks. Had the UK had dynamic alignment and certificate free trade with the EU much of this meat would have entered the UK. Without the current level of checks, this diseased meat would have entered the UK food chain. 

8. UK and EU regulatory divergence in agrifood

Since leaving the EU, the UK has predominantly changed animal welfare rules, such as the transport of live animals for slaughter and fattening from Great Britain, and has banned the dredging for sand eels in English waters. While the EU has changed its crop production rules by lowering its Maximum Residue Limits for pesticides. The UK has not followed the EU’s changes for pesticide MRLs; it dropped the EU’s “3 crop rule", crop diversification requirement under Regulation (EU) No 1307/2013, which applied to farms with more than 30 hectares of arable land and required at least three crops, with a 75% limit on the share of the main crop. The EU has retained this requirement but made it slightly more flexible by including crop rotation and mixed planting.

9. Food contact material means packaging

Defra’s publication clearly states that any materials that come into contact with agrifood products must comply with EU requirements for packaging materials. The EU has recently banned or limited the use of several types of PFAS plastics commonly used to package takeaway food in the UK. The EU also has different food standards and food marketing requirements. All three will force UK food producers and manufacturers to change their packaging for wholesale and retail agrifoods and may require some food manufacturers to change their utensils.

In the DEFRA publication, UK-EU SPS Agreement - Legislation in scope - GOV.UK, packaging is covered in three sections:

a. Food Contact materials, which means both wholesale and retail packaging, as well as vessels used in food processing and manufacturing. Defra explains this in the description: ‘Alignment with EU rules on plastics, ceramics and other food contact materials will affect packaging manufacturers, food processors, laboratories, retailers and the NHS.’

b. Packaging will also be affected under the section: General Food Law and Consumer Information. This will affect the required information on retail packaging.

c. Food composition and labelling standards on retail packaging will be affected under the section: Marketing Standards for Specific Foods.

9. My credentials in SPS regulations

The committee should be aware that I served on the UK Trade and Agriculture Commission from 2021 to 2024 and was responsible for scrutinising the UK’s trade deals with Australia, New Zealand, and other CPTPP countries for compliance with UK agricultural regulations. This required the committee to review the agricultural regulations and practices in the eleven CPTPP countries, as well as those in all other countries with which the UK had signed trade agreements, because WTO rules prohibit restricting agricultural trade from one country if it allows it from another when both use the same agricultural methods. Consequently, the Commission was required to familiarise itself with EU regulations as well as the differences in regulation between the devolved Governments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which have distinct agricultural regulations.

Received 11 June 2026