Smoky bacon crisps 'under threat' from Burnham Brexit reset deal

Smoky bacon crisps could be banned from supermarket shelves in the UK as part of Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s Brexit reset deal with the EU.

Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to see the UK adapt to EU regulations on plant, animal and food trade standards to remove post-Brexit checks from exports, the popular flavour could fall foul of planned EU laws prohibiting the use of “meaty” terms to describe vegetarian food.

To prevent consumers being confused, the crisps are facing the prospect of having to change its name to remove references to meat, as most smoky bacon crisps are made with flavourings rather than real meat.

Smoky bacon crisps may have to be renamed

Walkers

Alternately, manufacturers could change recipes to make them no longer suitable for vegetarians - but adding beef extract to a crisp recipe would increase costs and shorten shelf life.

By becoming an EU ruletaker, the Government would need to sign up to a list of 31 banned terms for plant-based food, which also includes “steak”, “fillet”, “ribs”, “chicken”, and “beef”.

The food and farming deal is one of three agreements Mr Burnham is set to sign with Brussels negotiators at the EU-UK summit on November 20, alongside a deal on emissions trading and a youth mobility scheme.

One Cabinet minister told her interviewer to “get a life” when asked about claims on Thursday morning.

Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle expressed exasperation when asked about the report on Time Radio, likening it to the Brexit debate about bendy bananas.

Dame Angela told host Stig Abell: “Oh, Stig. I mean, really, we’ve had EU straight bananas, and now we’re talking about banning smoky bacon crisps, I think you should get a life.

Dame Angela Eagle

Getty

“This is actually about ensuring that we can do business with our closest neighbours.

“We’ve got huge potential growth in our economy if we allow our farmers and food producers to be able to export into Europe again without all the huge uncertainty and the costs and frictions that Brexit brought us.

“This will be a deal that improves that situation and it will enable this economy to grow and for us to have higher levels of prosperity than we’ve had before. If you want to obsess about smoky bacon crisps, I suppose that’s your choice.”

“When 17.4 million UK citizens voted to leave the EU, it wasn’t so they could subsequently tell us what to put in a Walkers crisp packet.

“Why on earth is Andy Burnham so desperate to rejoin an organisation that wants to dictate to us like this, whenever they get the chance?”

Dawn Carr, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said: “If lawmakers were not kowtowing to industry but being serious about truthful food labels, they’d require dairy milk to be labelled ‘cow lactation fluid’, eggs ‘chicken ova’, and meat ‘flesh’.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to attend the EU-UK summit on November 20

PA Wire

“It doesn’t matter to animals what we call vegan foods; it matters only that we choose them over the fleshy, bloody alternatives.”

Mr Burnham has said the Government will “explore options” following the UK-EU summit for a different long-term relationship with the bloc.

His remarks in recent weeks have fuelled questions about the prospect of the UK returning to the EU or adopting its freedom of movement rules, but the Prime Minister has insisted voters would ultimately be “the boss” of any changes.