Burnham should abandon the Reset.
Here’s what’s wrong with the EU Agri-food Reset.
CATHERINE MCBRIDE
Shortly after being elected, the Starmer Government proposed that the UK should dynamically align with the EU’s food and agricultural regulations. This wasn’t in their manifesto, but they decided to do it anyway, claiming it would boost UK exports in food and agriculture: an area of the economy constrained by the UK’s small landmass, cold climate, and relatively large population. But, hey ho.
Starmer has now gone, and so has his European Union Relations Minister, Nick Thomas Symonds, the man behind the idiotically badly thought-through UK Reset with the EU. But what of the Reset itself?
At the moment, it is not clear whether the new Burnham Government intends to continue with the Reset. Although government publications about the Reset now have a stamp proclaiming that:
.
These notices usually appear after a change of government to one with a new plan, so hopefully this is also true of the Reset. However, in case Burnham does intend to continue with it, the article below is a list of some of the things that are wrong with the agrifood section of the Reset, which covers:
- animal and plant health,
- live animal welfare,
- animal transport regulations,
- food safety,
- food production regulations,
- distribution and consumption of agri-food products,
- pesticide regulations,
- consumer protection rules regarding food,
- food contact materials,
- organic production rules and labelling, as well as
- marketing standards applicable to agri-food products.[1]
This is not an exhaustive list; DEFRA believes 75 agri-food sectors will be covered by the Reset. Each sector contains multiple new EU regulations introduced after the UK left the EU. So while the UK has not altered many of the regulations it followed as an EU member, the EU has introduced thousands of new regulations and altered many of the old ones that we continue to use. Under the Reset, the EU’s regulations will apply to all UK agri-food businesses, not just those that trade with the EU. So all farmers and food manufacturers will need to alter their products and processes to comply. This will be a very expensive process for most of them, although not for the government ministers who came up with the plan.
The aim of the agri-food section of the Reset is, according to the European Commission, so that ‘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] However, I suspect the real aim is to reverse the increase in British food imports from non-EU countries, up by 27% since 2019 according to the ONS, using CVM to account for inflation.[3]
However, dynamic alignment with the EU’s SPS area is unnecessary and will not increase UK food exports; it will just be another burden on UK taxpayers, and potentially very dangerous for the UK’s plant and 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.[4] This was just 0.4% of the UK’s GDP of £3,037 billion in 2025[5] 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 has to be imported.[6] The UK does not even fully supply the foods 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; cutting red tape won’t change this.
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 the Reset 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 while forcing all non-exporting agri-food businesses to change their production methods, processes and packaging to meet EU regulations.
2. Limited 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 something he called a ‘paperwork tax’ 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, as mentioned earlier. Dynamic alignment with the EU’s SPS regulations will only reduce exporters’ ‘paperwork tax’ by a small amount.[7] But UK taxpayers will be asked to pay 10 times this amount for access to the EU SPS area.
Not that SPS health certificates are the only cost of exporting food to the EU: UK exporters will still have to complete: customs declarations; rules of origin compliance to qualify for zero tariffs under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement; VAT obligations and potentially register for EU VAT and file EU VAT returns on Business to Consumer sales; comply with EU safety, labelling, and packaging rules including EU waste rules; complete EU Economic Operations Registration and identification (EORI) forms; EU Safety and Security declarations, packing lists and transport documents; and submit to EU customs risk checks, anti-fraud checks, security screening and weight/volume inspections as well as pay the usual haulage costs, insurance and cold chain energy costs. All those other costs will still exist, even under the proposed EU SPS Reset.
The primary difference will be that the small savings will benefit private companies trading with the EU while the high costs will be paid by UK taxpayers who do not profit from trading with the EU.
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 agri-food goods to the EU, predominantly seafood, and imports agri-food 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 the £70 million potential gains. [8]
4. Potential gains for EU companies not UK farmers
In total, the UK only exported food and live animals worth £12.1 billion to the EU in 2025.[9] Removing SPS checks is unlikely to increase UK food exports at all, let alone boost GDP by ‘up to’ £5 billion a year as some vested interest groups have apparently claimed.[10]
The UK doesn’t have the capacity to increase its agri-food production by this amount and didn’t export anywhere near that amount of food when it was a full EU member with ‘certificate-free’ trade. In 2020, the last year of the UK EU Transition Agreement, UK food and live animal exports to the EU were only £10.8 billion, in 2020 prices, despite full EU access, and only £12.9 billion in CVM-adjusted prices.
At least Dunbia, the meat processor extoling the Reset in government publications, is honest enough to explain that the Reset ‘should result in potential cost savings for our businesses’. But the publication doesn’t mention that UK taxpayers will be subsidising their cost savings by paying 10 times this amount to the EU’s Cohesion funds. Nor do Government publications mention that Dunbia is a Northern Ireland meat processor, fully owned by the Irish meat processor Dawn Meats. Ireland supplies about 70% of British meat imports. So the Reset, purporting to help British agricultural EXPORTERS, is actually helping EU companies export to Britain.
It is also worth noting that the Irish meat lobby group, Meat Industry Ireland, is upset that its share of UK meat imports has fallen from 80% before Brexit to just 67% in 2025.[11] They blame this on the post-Brexit UK trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. But the chart below from Ireland’s Bord Bia makes it obvious that the increase in the price of meat imports from Ireland has nothing to do with the cost of red tape or veterinary checks. And the Reset will not fix this. But the Reset could force the UK to buy more expensive Irish meat rather than import cheaper meat from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico or Chile. The EU would just need to change its (precautionary principle-based) food standards to achieve this.
5. The UK’s booming Agtech sector could disappear under EU regulations
By being outside the EU and its regulations, the UK has developed a growing agricultural technology industry. 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, precision breeding, sustainability and biotechnology.
The UK’s Agtech industry has pioneered innovations in: climate-resilient crops; fungal-based biopesticides to suppress aphids; UK-climate-tolerant rubber plants; plants containing Omega-3 fatty acids; root-mist nutrient delivery systems; robotic harvesting of soft fruits; and pollinator-tracking sensors.[13]
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.[12] Defra agrees that GMOs will be in scope of the Reset’s SPS alignment.
6. No 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 Reset will 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 with the EU.
We have seen that even as a member of the EU, the UK had little influence in the Union’s agricultural decision-making. For example, the EU restricted UK beef exports for about 10 years after the BSE crisis, even though the UK was a member of the EU; it had no ability to influence EU SPS regulations.[14]
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. This is clearly explained in the EU’s Council Decisions, Register of Commission Documents – COM(2025)408, main Document, Section 5.1, paragraph 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 [European] Union interests in case of non-compliance with the agreements.’
The Reset requires all UK agri-food companies to follow the EU’s regulations immediately, whether or not they export to the EU. The EU has made this clear in Section 5.1, paragraphs 3 and 4, which are reproduced below;
‘3. Both agreements should provide for an obligation for the United Kingdom to dynamically align to the relevant [European] Union legislation. The principle of dynamic alignment should ensure that identical rules within the scope of the agreement are simultaneously applied.’ [my emphasis]
‘4. Both agreements should ensure uniform interpretation and application of [European] 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.’ [15] [my emphasis]
7. Dynamic Alignment means identical rules applied simultaneously
It is impossible to misunderstand what the EU means by dynamic alignment, yet UK politicians are trying to convince themselves that they will be able to influence EU decision-making, pick and choose the agri-food regulation they want to follow and ignore those that don’t suit the UK climate, UK agriculture, or UK food manufacturing.
The Starmer Government also overlooked the most important detail – most UK food and agricultural companies are domestically focused. Their primary customers are British citizens, not EU ones, but they will still have to follow EU laws. This also applies to companies exporting agri-foods to the US, China, the Middle East or any other country that does not follow EU regulations. Consequently, the Reset could reduce the UK’s growing exports to non-EU markets rather than increase UK exports to the EU. UK exports of Food and Live Animals to non-EU countries increased by 34% between 2019 and 2025, while exports to the EU increased by only 12%, both measured in current prices.
So I reiterate, Dynamic alignment means that the UK follows EU laws identically and immediately. The Reset will force changes to everything from pesticide production and use, to food colouring, packaging materials and nutritional information; all based on the EU’s precautionary principle rather than risk-based scientific methods. The Reset will even alter UK animal welfare regulations and live animal transport rules.
8. The disease risks associated with a common SPS Area are real
If the Reset continues and achieves its aims of removing health certificates, border controls, and creating a common SPS area between Great Britain and the continental EU, it would be extremely dangerous for UK animal-based agriculture.
The EU does not have an exemplary record of limiting animal and plant diseases from crossing its borders. For example: 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: the first outbreak in Brandenburg, Germany, affected 14 animals; the next outbreak in Kisbajcs, Hungary, affected 1,400 dairy cattle; a second outbreak in Hungary, affected 3000 animals; then Gyor-Sopron, Hungary, another 1000 cattle; a second outbreak in Gyor-Sopron, Hungary, affected 2,500 animals; Slovakia’s multiple outbreaks involved approximately 10,000 animals on farms in Bratislavsky, Trnavsky, and Nitriansky.[16] Foot and Mouth Disease reached Cyprus in February 2026 and reached Greece in March 2026.[17] Why would we want this in the UK?
The UK has a climate where Foot and Mouth Disease thrives in the type of animals most commonly kept on UK farms. 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 has ‘certificate-free’ borders with the other three countries. Similarly, Defra’s ban on non-commercial imports extends to EFTA countries, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands because they have free 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 EU’s disease problems are not limited to foot and mouth disease. It also has current and ongoing cases of African Swine Fever in pigs, Lumpy Skin Disease in cattle and Peste des Petits Ruminants in sheep.
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, following 478 outbreaks 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.[18] 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.
Fears of diseased meat entering the UK food supply are not exaggerated. In February 2025, the BBC reported that Dover Port Health Authority had confiscated 100 tonnes of diseased meat in 868 separate consignments.[19] 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.
Adopting the EU’s SPS regulations and removing our border controls could lead to our non-EU trading partners imposing similar precautionary restrictions on UK agricultural products. Canada currently restricts imports of dairy and beef products from France, Italy and Switzerland to prevent Lumpy Skin Disease getting into Canadian dairy cattle, even though Switzerland has not had an outbreak of LSD. It shares borders with France and Italy.
9. UK and EU regulatory divergence in agri-food
Since leaving the EU, Great Britain has predominantly changed animal welfare rules, such as the transport of live animals for slaughter and fattening, and it has banned the dredging for sand eels in English waters. The EU has also changed its agricultural rules but with an emphasis on crop production rather than animal welfare. For example: The EU has lowered its Maximum Residue Limits for pesticides for both domestic production and imported produce.
The Reset will force British farmers to align with EU rules on: active substances authorisation, pesticide residue levels, and the sale and marketing of pesticides. This will have implications for farmers and growers, agrochemical manufacturers, distributors, food retailers and other businesses using pesticides. This will prevent the UK from importing crops and cereals from many other countries that have pesticide regulations based on risk-based scientific assessment. The EU’s pesticide regulations are based on the hazard-based precautionary principle rather than the risk-based scientific assessment used by the majority of the developed world, including Great Britain.
The Reset will require the UK to change its pesticide regulations immediately whenever the EU does. So far in 2026, the EU has made 20 changes to its Plant Protection List.[20] In 2025, the EU made 38 changes to its plant protection product lists, while in 2024 it made 78 changes.[21] Since leaving the EU, Great Britain has not followed the EU’s many MRL changes but has instead aligned 764 MRLs with international standards known as Codex Alimentarius.
Since leaving the EU, Britain has also 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. This rule prevented Britain’s large farms from maximising their returns by preventing them from using all of their land to grow the most profitable crops. The Reset would force the UK to follow the EU’s rules again. The EU has retained this requirement but made it slightly more flexible by including crop rotation and mixed planting.
10. Food contact material means packaging
Defra’s publication on the UK regulations to be impacted by the Reset clearly states that any materials that come into contact with agri-food products must comply with EU requirements for packaging materials.[22] 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. The Reset will force UK food producers and manufacturers to change their packaging for wholesale and retail agri-foods 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.
British food and drink manufacturers have recently had to change their packaging to conform with UK recycling regulations and to add ‘Not for EU’ labels. Forcing them to change again to conform with EU regulations will be a very expensive exercise, especially for small and medium-sized manufacturers who are less likely to export goods to the EU.
Conclusion
In a recent interview with the BBC, Andy Burnham said he would always put UK interests first; well, I have a list for him of how he can do this, but close to the top of the list would be to abandon the Reset. UK agricultural trade is doing fine without it, and UK taxpayers can’t afford to subsidise private company costs.
[1] European Commission Council Decision COM(2025) 408 Final, Section 5.1, paragraph 10, (Link to section)
[2] European Commission Council Decision COM(2025) 408 Final, Section 1.1, paragraph (a), (Link to section)
[3] ONS, UK trade in goods and services, annual chained volume measures, May 2026 (Link)
[4] UK trade: goods and services publication tables – Office for National Statistics
[5] The UK’s GDP was £3,037 billion in 2025.
[6] AUK-chapter14-20250710.ods, tab 14-3
[7] EU alignment ‘will not cut trade red tape’, claim experts | News | The Grocer
[8] Cui Bono, by Catherine McBride.
[9] ONS UK Trade: Goods and Services publication tables, May 2026, Annual CP, (Link)
[10] British businesses cheer UK-EU deal to support food trade and profits – GOV.UK
[11] Irish beef loses UK market share to Australian and Brazilian imports – Agriland.ie
[12] See case C-528/16, July 2018, Confédération paysanne and Others v Premier ministre and Ministre de l’Agriculture, de l’Agroalimentaire et de la Forêt [2023] EUECJ C-528/16, 62016CJ0528
[13] Agri-tech in the UK: industry profile | ICAEW
[14] ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_06_278, BSE: UK beef embargo to be lifted, 8 March 2006.
[15] Register of Commission Documents – COM(2025)408 , Main Document, Section 5.1, paragraph 2, paragraph 3, and paragraph 4.
[16] Source: Foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease outbreaks in Europe – Update – FVE – Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, and Foot-and-mouth disease – Food Safety – European Commission.
[17] Foot-and-mouth disease European outbreaks | AHDB and Foot-and-mouth disease – Food Safety – European Commission
[18] African swine fever in Europe
[19] Dover: Almost 100 tonnes of illegal meat seized at port last year – BBC News
[20] EU Pesticides Database – MRLs – Latest updates on MRLs
[21] Yearly review of EU and GB MRL changes in 2025 | COLEAD – COLEAD 2026
[22] UK-EU SPS Agreement – Legislation in scope – GOV.UK
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