Ted McKinney, undersecretary for trade at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, called the EU a very difficult place to do business and welcomed Brexit as an a opportunity to ‘press the reset button’.
And he added that if Theresa May ditches many of the crippling EU rules on farming and food processing, there would be “a much greater opportunity for trade between the UK and US”
Mr McKinney said: “We hope the UK will look for its own food standards, environmental safety protocols.
“We find the EU a very difficult place to do business and so we hope that as part of Brexit, the reset button can at least be considered.”
In a dig at the recent row over chlorine-treated American chickens he added he was “sick and tired” of hearing from Britain that American chicken isn’t safe to eat and said: “We would like all of British society to understand that is not a practice that’s in use very much.”
“The quality of our poultry, we’d put up against UK poultry any day of the week and twice on Sunday.”
The USA is likely to be a key trade partner in a post-Brexit world and Mrs May is desperate to nail a successful transAtlantic deal.
She has discussed the matter with President Donald Trump and working groups have begun to map out the shape of the agreement.
However Britain is prevented from conducting formal trade talks with any country until it leaves the European Union in March 2019.