Non-tariff barriers limit U.S. beef, pork UK access

In June the United Kingdom opened a duty-free tariff rate quota for U.S. beef with a 2025 volume of about 8,500 metric tons. The country is currently a large pork importer, buying around $2.7 billion in 2024, nearly all of it European Union pork which enters tariff free.

U.S. Meat Export Federation Chair-Elect Jay Theiler of Agri Beef recently traveled to the United Kingdom on a trade mission with Idaho Governor Brad Little. The group met with farmers, importers and trade officials to discuss the trade agreement framework recently announced by President Donald Trump.

"I was part of a delegation where I went over with the governor of Idaho, who's a rancher himself, to talk about the new trade deal. Talked a lot about the beef deal, but we also realize that there's some opportunities for pork, obviously, if they can work out some of the details on that, where the UK is taking a lot of pork from the European Union right now," Theiler says. "So I think it's in the range of between $2 and $3 billion, so there's an opportunity for pork, and certainly there is an opportunity for beef. If we can get duty-free access to the British market."

Theiler notes there is strong potential for both U.S. beef and pork in the UK, but lingering non-tariff barriers to U.S. product must be addressed in order to provide full access. These barriers include excessive phytosanitary and labeling regulations.

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"They've been aligned with the EU for so long, and they're so dependent on import and export with the European Union that we're not sure what exactly those requirements are going to be, but there's a lot of other access issues that are creating friction that we hope we can see some movement on," Theiler says. "Some of the phytosanitary regulations, labeling - I mean, they label right now, everything going in the UK is still part of the EU. It's labeled in eight languages. Each individual piece is labeled. So there's a lot of things like that that are details that make the trade more difficult. So hopefully we can work some of those things out."

Theiler says there is certainly demand for U.S. red meat there.

"I feel like the steakhouse segment is really strong there, and I think that would be a nice niche for U.S. products," Theiler says. "A lot of what's produced there is more sort of grass fed products. And, you know, I think they see there's potential opportunity in the states for some of their products and some lean and things like that. But there is definitely an opportunity for high quality, grain fed products from the states going over to the UK."

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