Brits need to get over their beef with US meat

I eat steak whenever I'm in the United States. Your steaks are bigger, juicier, and more tender than those I can buy in Europe. Why? Partly because American cattle are given hormones that are banned in the EU.

Now, you might prefer the idea of unadulterated beef, raised only on rich green grass. Plenty of people in Europe say they do, and good luck to them. No one is going to force them to eat anything they don't want. But why should they impose their taste on the rest of us?

Over the past two weeks, a bizarre alliance has coalesced in Britain against the import of American food, in particular beef and chicken (which, being washed in chlorine, is also outlawed by the EU). A post-EU Britain will be free to sign a trade deal with the U.S., removing the more superstitious restrictions, thus lowering costs for British consumers. Who could be against that? Quite a few people, it turns out — anti-Americans, Leftist agitators, militant vegetarians and, not least, Euro-fanatics who want Brexit to fail, and so oppose any post-EU trade deals. Plus, of course, some U.K. farmers who, like all producers in all countries, want to keep out competition.

If a U.S.-U.K. trade deal is consumer-led, removes irrational barriers, and asserts the basic principle that what may be sold in one country may legally be sold in the other, the potential gains are vast.

Here, though, is the key point: The biggest gains are to the country that sweeps away its own barriers. Sure, there will be some gains for Nebraskan ranchers if Britain allows U.S. beef into its markets. But the real advantage goes to the Brits. As prices fall in the U.K., time and resources which would otherwise have gone on purchasing food are freed up to make and sell other stuff.