Trouble looks to be bubbling for UK food production
The agreement has upped the amount of tariff-free US beef allowed into the UK to 13,000 tonnes annually, but that quota is matched the other way around for UK beef exports. Experts reckon there is scope for British producers to capitalise on the premium market in the United States, while on the other hand the 13,000 tonnes of US meat headed in this direction is equivalent to about 3% of all UK beef imports, and therefore unlikely to have a major distorting effect on the domestic market.
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Ethanol and bioethanol - the same substance, though the former can be produced from fossil fuels while the latter comes strictly from renewables such as plant biomass - is a different story.
The US is the world's largest producer of ethanol which is produced primarily from maize, which the country's "corn belt" states in the midwest produce an abundance of. The UK-US EPD will remove the current 19% tariff on US ethanol imports and replace this with a duty-free quota of 1.4 billion litres.
While this should lower costs for manufacturing sectors in the UK that use ethanol as a raw material, it could also pose a considerable threat to agriculture.
British ethanol is mainly made from feed wheat which supports farmers across the country. The UK's two main bioethanol plants currently have capacity to purchase around two million tonnes of wheat each year, so if industrial users shifted to cheaper US ethanol imports, many farmers would lose a reliable market for their feed wheat.
Furthermore, UK bioethanol production generates a number of by-products, including up to one million tonnes of animal feed annually. A lack of domestic production could ripple into the wider market.
Another crucial by-product is carbon dioxide, which is used extensively throughout the UK food system for things such as putting the fizz into carbonated beverages, stunning pigs and poultry before slaughter, and extending the shelf life of fresh and chilled food.
Key players will therefore be watching to see if an emerging CO2 problem is around the corner, a situation last faced in 2022 when soaring energy prices led to a disruption in supplies. Among them will be Associated British Foods, which has already warned that its Vivergo biofuels factor in Yorkshire may be financially unviable.
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