After over 20 years living in Britain, there are still things I miss from the US. I still dream of Vidalia onions from Georgia that are so sweet, I’d happily peel them and munch them raw, like an apple.

Or a peach from Dixon, New Mexico that’s so ripe, the juice runs down my chin in rivulets.

Sweetcorn from southern Colorado that’s so tender, so just-picked, that I can shuck it and eat it without ever cooking it.

These are things I long for. But I don’t miss chicken for the simple reason that it doesn’t taste like chicken, rather like a plumped up, processed, protein.

Living in the UK, I’ve been spoiled. On Saturday I go to my local butcher and pick out a British bird that’s free range. On Sunday I rub it with fat and sprinkle it with salt and roast it until the skin is crisp and the flesh moist.

Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Show all 12 1 /12 Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Derry, Londonderry A garage door displaying unionism, bolted shut, like a visual representation of Brexit Britain, locked to outsiders, safeguarding what’s inside Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Derry, Londonderry Rossville Street, the site of Bloody Sunday, where messages demand a severance with England. From this perspective, Britain is England in sheep’s clothing, the real empire, the centre of colonial power Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Bangor A political message in paint not yet dry, still forming, setting, adjusting, or in old paint finally eroding, melting away Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Bangor Moral judgement frames a residential view. The message seeks to make everybody involved in the religious narrative: those who don’t believe are those most in debt Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Castlerock The beach is sparse and almost empty, but covered in footprints. The shower is designed to wash off sand, and a mysterious border cuts a divide through the same sand Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Belfast Two attempts to affect and care for the body. One stimulated by vanity and social norms and narratives of beauty, the other by a need to keep warm in the winter night Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Belfast The gate to an unclaimed piece of land, where nothing is being built, where no project is in the making, where a sign demands the creation of something new Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Derry, Londonderry Under a motorway bridge a woman’s face stares, auburn and red-lipped, her skin tattooed with support for the IRA and a message of hostility to advocates of the Social Investment Fund Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Derry, Londonderry The Fountain Murals, where the curbs and the lampposts are painted the red, white, and blue of the Union Flag. A boy walks past in the same colours, fitting the scene, camouflaged Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Coleraine A public slandering by the football fields, for all to see or ignore. I wonder if it’s for the police or for the community Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Belfast A tattoo parlour, where the artist has downed tools, momentarily, bringing poise to the scene, which looks like a place of mourning, not a site of creation Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Northern Ireland Derry, Londonderry A barrier of grey protects the contents of this shop, guarding it from the streets outside, but it cannot conceal it completely, and the colours of lust and desire and temptation cut through Richard Morgan/The Independent

The next day, whatever is leftover is dinner and on the third day, the picked-over carcass goes into the pot and emerges as an admirable stock.

Now that, is a chicken.

US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson would call it a museum exhibition. Writing in the Telegraph, he said that our current agricultural policies are outdated and unsustainable, especially if we’re committed to feeding a hungry planet. Calling the EU’s policies a “museum of agriculture”, he said: “The EU approach prizes history and tradition over innovation and science. In the United States, we look at the bigger picture.”

Adding that terms like “chlorinated chicken” and “hormone beef” are “inflammatory and misleading”, Johnson claims they’re “myths” and part of a “smear campaign”. I’d say that they’re honest statements about how food is produced in the US.

And it’s not simply whether chlorine is harmful to us; it’s what it says about the methods used to rear those animals. As a committed omnivore, I think we have a responsibility to say that the wellbeing of livestock matters. As consumers, I think we need to make a clear stand on what is and is not acceptable.

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I’m not alone. In a study conducted last year by the Institute for Public Policy Research, 82 per cent of the British public said they were unwilling to lower food standards in order to secure a trade deal with the US, and this was consistent for Leave and Remain supporters.

It’s not just chlorinated chickens either. Witnesses at the House of Commons International Trade Committee talked about the use of growth hormones, lack of labelling of GM foods and the use of banned pesticides in the US. And if products coming in from the US aren’t properly labelled, then how will we as consumers know what we’re buying? How can we make a choice if that choice isn’t clear?

I’ve had the opportunity to speak to farmers in the UK and to see how they treat their livestock. Yes, they meet high standards because it’s the law, but also because for most of them it matters deeply.

Farming today is not for the faint of heart, whether it’s a family farmer hoping against hope that there will be something left to leave their children, or the rare optimist who scrapes and saves enough to build a farm from scratch.