The meat industry responded with cautious optimism to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's announcement that the US market will open to UK lamb products for "the first time in decades."
Speaking in the US where he is engaged in talks with UN leaders and President Joe Biden, Johnson told the BBC there was "every prospect" of a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and the United States, adding: "In the meantime, what we are doing is taking practical steps to help our exporters."
Johnson mentioned the lifting of the ban on UK beef exports to the US last year, continuing: "I can tell you today that what we're going to get from the United States now is a lifting of the ban, a decades-old ban - totally unjustified and discriminating against British farmers - on British lamb. So we're going to be able to export British lamb to the United States for the first time in decades for the kebabs, the koftas, the lamb burgers. The people of the United States will be supplied, at last, with fantastic juicy cuts of Welsh lamb and everything else. It's about time too."
He added that the government was looking to make "solid, incremental steps on trade", saying that the Biden administration was not making Free Trade Agreements "right now", but that he had "every confidence that a great deal is there to be done."
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
