UK trade deal with Australia amounts to ‘offshoring’ pesticide use, MPs say

A wheat crop in South Australia. ‘Pesticide limits in Australia are 200 times higher than the UK’s,’ said the MP Angus MacNeil. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

The government is rushing through a trade deal with Australia that would allow food produced with pesticides banned in the UK to be imported into the country, campaigners and MPs have said.

The international trade select committee in parliament has called for a vote on the deal, which would result in food produced below British domestic environmental standards being sold in the UK.