According to a committee of MPs – the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee, to be exact – a free trade deal with the EU after Brexit is "crucial" for the UK food and drink industry and failure to secure one would be "disastrous."
One thing is for sure, for those of us in the processed food and drink industry, some kind of free trade deal before Brexit is vital – this is the country's largest manufacturing sector, after all, employing 400,000 people and worth some £28.8bn per annum. We need some kind of certainty about how our industry is going to cope with the inevitable complications caused by any kind of Brexit.
The committee remarks that UK exports of processed foods such as chocolate, cheese, beef, pork and soft drinks in particular would suffer.