INTERNATIONAL Trade Secretary Liam Fox may water down food safety standards regarding chlorine-washed chicken as part of his much vaunted trade deal with the US which is to be signed once the UK leaves the EU.

Dr Fox is selling the country down the river to placate the US farming and pharmaceutical lobbies.

The US pharmaceutical lobby is incredibly powerful, financing the election of many members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

This is what we have to look forward to after Brexit: cheap meat filled with chemicals, hormones and steroids swamping the UK and massively undercutting British farmers, putting many of them out of business.

Martin Jones, Spennymoor

LOOKING for any excuse to thwart Brexit, Remoaners have now seized upon the issue of chlorine-washed chicken and its probable acceptance as part of any future UK/US trade deal.

The process of decontaminating chicken carcasses using a chemical wash has been going on for years in the US. Chicken treated this way is mostly free from salmonella and campylobacter. Chicken produced using a simple water based wash (as the EU insists) normally has ten times as much harmful bacteria.

What makes this argument so ridiculous is that the EU’s own safety regulator, the European Food Safety Authority is perfectly content that the American process is safe.

Of course, the objection has nothing to do with food safety. It is about restricting competition and the desire of the EU to defend its farmers while pushing up our food prices.

Once free from the dead hand of the EU and its absurd Common Agricultural Policy, we can import food at world prices, not the inflated cost that protectionist European policies dictate.

DW Lacey, Newton Hall, Durham