Waitrose rules out American beef and chicken despite US trade deal

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16-05-2025

Waitrose has ruled out buying American beef and chicken as it insisted it would stand 'shoulder-to-shoulder with our farmers' after Sir Keir Starmer's US trade deal.
The supermarket said it would not undermine its animal welfare standards and planned to continue to source its own-brand beef, lamb, chicken, pork, eggs and fresh milk from British farms.
British and US officials last week agreed to cut tariffs on US beef imports, prompting fears the UK market could be flooded with American meat products that undercut British-made products.
The UK Government has insisted there will be no watering down of food safety standards to allow products such as hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken into British stores.
Peter Navarro, Donald Trump's trade tsar, last week called European food standards a 'phoney tool used to suppress what is very fine American agricultural product'.
The US trade deal allows gives American farmers a quota to import 13,000 tonnes of beef that meets UK welfare standards. But supermarket bosses have sought to distance themselves from the agreement, pledging to maintain commitments to source products such as beef from British cattle.
On Friday, Jake Pickering, head of agriculture at Waitrose, said: 'We want to reassure Waitrose customers that we will never compromise on our number-one animal welfare standards or our long-standing commitment to British farming.
'All of our own-brand fresh beef, lamb, chicken, pork, eggs and fresh milk are sourced from British farmers to high welfare standards – and we have raised the bar for customers with the Better Chicken Commitment and introduction of our new welfare labelling.
'We're standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our farmers and backing better standards.'
Ken Murphy, the chief executive of Tesco, this week said Britain's biggest supermarket group would not source beef from the US and would maintain its policy of sourcing 100pc of its beef from the UK and Ireland. 'We're not planning to change it,' he said.
Aldi, meanwhile, said it would continue to solely source its 'core' range of meat from British farms, while Co-op also said it was committed to sourcing 100pc British fresh and frozen meat.
Dalton Philips, the chief executive of Dublin-based Greencore, a food supplier, told The Telegraph this week its supermarket customers were concerned about food standards.
He said: 'They will do a lot of in-depth research before they start introducing proteins where there may possibly be some anxiety from the consumer, and we work very closely with them.
'British food resilience is absolutely key. We need to produce more in the UK, and eat more from the UK.'
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