This is the report Downing Street have been trying to stifle since yesterday evening. We bring it to you now, in full and uncut.

“Burnham’s Reckless Reset” - New forecast predicts grim rise in cost of food

Disastrous “EU agri-food SPS deal” will increase food prices under PM’s plans, warns think-tank

* * * * *

Report lays waste to PM's major policy, ahead of his 'Reset' Summit 1 month from today

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2026

Key plank of Burnham’s EU Reset is set to impose 'wholesale disruption of UK food chain'

The PM plans to agree to the EU’s demands on its agri-food laws at the EU-UK Reset Summit in exactly one month's time. The proposed deal threatens to disrupt Great Britain's entire domestic food chain and cause major price rises. These are some of the findings of a detailed review.

If the Prime Minister goes ahead – which appears likely – the new ‘EU SPS agri-food’ regime is predicted to impose billions of pounds of extra UK packaging and farming costs, as well as adding serious biosecurity and health risks.

The ‘SPS agri-food’ deal is part of the Prime Minister’s proposed EU surrender

Taking just one plank of the Government’s proposed “EU Reset”, the Brexit Facts4EU think-tank, with colleagues from Stand for Our Sovereignty and The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK.Org), can reveal the potential catastrophe facing British consumers and the businesses and employees in the UK’s food, drink, agriculture, and packaging sectors. This report has been shared exclusively with GB News.

The layers of the EU's technical-sounding “Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement” have been peeled back for readers, exposing how intrusive and toxic this deal is, affecting many aspects of national life.

Even DEFRA have admitted the suffocating scope of this deal with the EU
(This is worth reading)

“This agreement covers the trade, production and movement of plants, animals and their products; food and feed safety; broader nutrition-related areas such as food supplements, fortified foods, food for specific groups, nutrition and health claims, and nutrition labelling; wider agrifood rules related to food labelling, organics, key agri-food marketing standards and compositional standards; as well as regulation of pesticides and biocides.”
- DEFRA statement, 28 May 2026 - Photo right: Angela Eagle, the new DEFRA Sec of State

What benefits would there be for the UK?

The proposed agreement would make only marginal improvements for the UK’s food exports to the EU, which account for only 1.27% of the country’s total global export trade of goods and services. Even excluding services, the agri-food sector accounts for just 2.9% of the value of all goods exports.

Conversely, the EU will benefit enormously, selling far more food to the UK than vice versa.

Despite the tiny British sums involved in this trade, Andy Burnham plans to force 100% of Great Britain's domestic food and drink businesses and packaging companies - and by consequence supermarket shoppers - to submit to dynamic Brussels regulations. The stated aim is to reduce alleged 'border frictions' for the sector.

Business and consumer disruption, as well as significant price increases, are predicted to result from Mr Burnham's desire to “align more closely” with the EU. Set to be agreed on 20 November, this is when the PM heads to Brussels to surrender this part of the UK's economy to the EU’s regulatory control.

Rt Hon Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI, former Single Market Minister and former Secretary of State
commented exclusively to GB News and Brexit Facts4EU

“As Chancellor Merz of Germany speaks out about the EU as the world champion of over-regulation, Mr Burnham goes cap in hand to Brussels to sign up the UK to more of it.
“Mr Merz says it is having a devastating impact on the German economy. Instead of taking his warning, the UK is wanting by stealth to gradually put us back under their huge and fast-expanding burden of extra costs, rules and taxes.
“If more rules and higher taxes gave us faster growth, leading EU countries would be top, not bottom of the world advanced country growth charts.

“The Reset plan is to start with the highly over-controlled farm and food sectors.
“Out of the EU, the UK is building a very successful new business from innovation and gene editing, freed from some of the bans and restrictions the EU imposes. Why on earth do we want to set all that back?
“An EU Reset will deliver less growth, not more.”

How important is this to the entire UK economy?

The claimed benefits in Mr Burnham's latest attempts to grow the economy in this way are difficult to reconcile with the agri-food sector representing only 0.39% of UK GDP in 2025.

Even if the PM’s intentions doubled the current level of UK export trade in agri-food – which would be impossible as the country now produces so little – it would not cover the costs to the whole economy, as explained below.

Who benefits in the UK?

According to HMRC, of all UK businesses exporting worldwide (200,000), only 6,000 (5%) come from the food and agriculture sector.

From overall trade statistics, we know that around 45% of exports go to the EU. If for agri-food we assumme the proportion is higher at 60%, then only 3,600 (1.8%) of all the UK's 200,000 goods exporters are exporting agri-food products to the EU. Below we have shown the higher figure of 6,000, to avoid any possible dispute.

The EU’s regulatory tail to wag the entire British economic dog?

The consumer penalties are already detailed in the European Commission's legal publications. Dynamic alignment forces the UK immediately to re-adopt the EU’s strict Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), mandating an immediate, industry-wide factory re-engineering of domestic production lines.

Of the ~£46bn UK packaging industry’s annual production, around £18bn is for food, drink and canning, according to the definitive industry annual report from Mordor Intelligence. Although impossible to quantify, the cost of the changes required will clearly run into many billions. Food and drink packaging of every kind will have to comply, whether or not the packaged items are destined for the EU. Examples include bottling plants being retooled to install mandatory, tethered bottle lids.

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Britain’s world-leading farmers under threat

British farmers will face a devastating squeeze on their livelihoods. Aligning dynamically with the EU's ‘maximum residue limits’ for crop protection will instantly outlaw techniques currently relied upon by UK growers.

Stripping away these defensive measures directly threatens the volume, availability, and price of basic British household staples, including potatoes, onions, carrots, and apples.

UK’s cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs will be severely blunted

Worse still, this regulatory alignment strangles one of the fastest-growing parts of the UK’s modern scientific economy.

Since decoupling from the EU's highly restrictive 'precautionary principle', the UK's agricultural technology and gene-editing sector has boomed under independent precision-breeding legislation.

Forcing the country’s world-leading laboratories back under Brussels ‘GMO’ rules freezes this investment, sacrificing a successful high-tech sector only to see marginally-improved ease of access, is wholly disproportionate.

The biosecurity gamble - walking EU diseases onto British farms

The final ingredient in this food deal is chilling. Readers will recall the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2001.

This became one of the most economically devastating livestock events in UK history, causing an overall financial loss to the economy estimated at £15 billion in today’s money.

The EU is battling major outbreaks of African swine fever, foot and mouth, ‘lumpy skin disease’, and highly destructive plant blights. Britain is free of these diseases.

Without independent DEFRA physical inspections at the border, the threat of infection and mass culls of UK livestock will once again become real.

The Rt Hon the Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI gave us his final comments

“Facts4EU have produced a brilliant, detailed analysis of the damage that accepting EU laws and taxes over farming and food will do.
“Our current farm exports to the EU are so small there cannot be sufficient pay-off from change, to offset the large costs EU rules on packaging and residues will impose on the big majority of UK businesses that do not export to the continent. There is also the worry about allowing in animal diseases from the continent.
“This government fails to get the main point about Brexit. We want to make our own laws and impose and collect our own taxes.

“The UK takes pride in science-based innovation, high welfare standards for animals, and an ability to buy the best value food and goods from anywhere in the world where we cannot make or grow them at home. This Reset wants to put us back under EU laws and European Court control.
“The Reset is designed in Brussels to burden our farms and businesses, shut out more product from the rest of the world, and make us more dependent on EU imports. We know that's the plan. That was what happened when we were in the EU.”

Coming early Thursday morning...

Our next report, "How the mighty EU has fallen" is something you do NOT want to miss! It exclusively reveals a "$1.7 trillion chasm" which we are quite sure Ursula von der Leyen and her bureaucrats would prefer you don't know about. To read this, make sure you come back in the very early hours of Thursday morning!

Observations

This is just one part of Andy Burnham’s ‘EU Reset’ and we will soon be covering the other parts. The agri-food deal was a good place to start for several reasons. Firstly, the title alone (“Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement”) is enough to make most people switch off and yet this deal would potentially be catastrophic for the UK on many levels.

It is a classic example of the PM’s placing of his ideological interests over those of the country. The only reason for agreeing to a deal anything like this is to please the EU and bring the UK more into line, making it ultimately easier to join.

Four weeks from today, Andy Burnham heads for Brussels. Already, massed ranks of civil servants are working on this with their EU counterparts. It’s essential that the Prime Minister hears the loudest voices possible, telling him that this deal is completely unacceptable to the British people.

Reminder of just how much of British national life the EU will regulate, if Burnham signs

Trade, production and movement of plants, animals and their products
Food and feed safety
Food supplements, fortified foods, food for specific groups
Nutrition and health claims, nutrition labelling
Food and drink labelling and packaging
Key agri-food marketing standards and compositional standards
Organics
Regulation of pesticides and biocides
Regulation of genetic advances
Entry of all EU food products into UK without health checks

[Source: DEFRA, 2026]

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[ Sources: Office for National Statistics | HMRC | World Organisation for Animal Health | Catherine McBride OBE, former Member of Govt Trade and Agriculture Commission ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Tues 20 Oct 2026

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Reader Comments 2

1. Alastair , Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 10:38:

even this report ignores the fact that the Reset would breach existing trade agreements which operate on WTO approved scientific principles. The UK could be liable for substantial compensation payments as a result

2. Have you Wondered , Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 12:10:

.
Via ai :
Legal compatibility
The UK would need to align its trade commitments, regulations and treaty obligations with EU law. Some commitments could be adjusted; others would require withdrawal or renegotiation.
Negotiations with third countries
Other countries might resist losing favourable UK-specific terms or being asked to extend EU-wide arrangements to the UK. The EU and the UK would have to manage those negotiations.
Political conditions of accession
Rejoining would require agreement among EU member states and ratification of an accession treaty. The UK could not simply resume its previous membership terms automatically.
And how long would the EU Supertanker take to accomplish that lot let alone 27 nations coming to agreement?
.
Not least - how would the 'City' and electorate view the obligation to adopt the Euro?
.

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