Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins detailed a trip to the United Kingdom, which she will make after President Donald Trump announced a new deal with the U.K. on Thursday.
Trump revealed that his deal with the U.K. would cement the relationship between the two countries, adding that it is a “great honor” to have the U.K. as part of his first announcement. Rollins said the president’s deal marked the beginning of realignment, arguing that the U.K.’s 9% tariff on U.S. goods was “almost double” the United States’s 5%.
Rollins acknowledged that there are “details to be worked out,” but she would travel to the U.K. on Sunday to spend a week there.
“Well, we’re going to visit, obviously, with my counterpart in the U.K., talking to their government,” Rollins said on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria Bartiromo. “We’ll obviously be talking a lot about the deal that is being announced today, but also, I’ll be visiting some key agricultural American producers and distributors over there, but also understanding their agriculture and how we can better partner as we move forward in putting America first.”
A spokesperson for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed that British food standards would not be lowered in this deal. It comes after U.K. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds also stated that food standards would not be changed when asked if “chlorinated chicken was on the table or off the table.”
Chicken is sometimes treated with a chemical rinse, such as chlorine, in the U.S. However, the European Union banned the practice in 1997.
Additionally, the U.K.’s handling of animal welfare differs from that of the U.S. The U.K.’s Animal Welfare Act 2006 requires animal owners to protect all vertebrate animals and prohibits animal cruelty. In comparison, the U.S.’s Animal Welfare Act requires minimum standards for care and treatment to be provided for certain animals bred for commercial use.
Rollins’s enthusiasm to work with the U.K. could also pave the way for both countries to respond better to health emergencies, like the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy outbreak in the 1980s and ’90s. Most of these cases occurred in the U.K., though six were identified within the U.S.
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Beyond her weeklong U.K. visit, Rollins also spotlighted some of the policies within her department that the Trump administration rolled back, arguing the Biden administration was “singularly focused on not putting farmers first.” Instead, she said previous leadership focused more on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which ranged from funding projects on transgender men and climate change.
The secretary said 3,000 contracts and grants focused on “radical left ideology” have been canceled under the Trump administration’s watch. She added that this is one of several things the administration is changing “very, very quickly.”
