Back to the future on food regulations: What’s changing in the UK?

Plans for the UK to realign with EU food laws will reduce import costs but leave a raft of unanswered questions including over the future for cell-cultivated meat

Nick Hughes

Mountains of paperwork. Long delays at the border. Spiralling costs of shipping certain types of food like meat and dairy both into the UK and out to Europe. These are just a few of the challenges food businesses have faced in the years since the UK officially left the EU’s regulatory orbit, and with it the single market and customs union.

Now, just a little over five years since the end of the Brexit transition period, ministers are planning to turn back the clock. In May 2025, a joint UK-EU Common Understanding document was signed which set out plans to align with EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules.

The UK Government is spinning the agreement as one that liberates British food and farming from burdensome red tape. A Defra press release from March declared: “Trade will flow faster, meaning imports of fresh produce will reach supermarket shelves more quickly and supply chains will become more resilient, strengthening food security here and in Europe. This creates opportunities to increase choice for consumers and ease pressures on food price inflation.”

Unsurprisingly, there was no acknowledgement that this merely returns Britain to the pre-Brexit status quo (Northern Ireland has remained tethered to EU rules under the Windsor Framework to enable the free movement of goods across the Irish border). Nevertheless, a return to frictionless trade with the EU has largely been welcomed by UK food and farming groups as an opportunity to smooth the logistics of importing goods, and rebuild food and agricultural exports that have slumped in value by 22% since 2018, a drop of almost £4bn in real terms.

Where the Common Understanding gets more sticky is over the detail of plans for “dynamic alignment” of regulations and what it means for areas of food law where the UK and EU have already diverged since Brexit either formally or in the intent of lawmakers to tread an independent path.

Take the example of nitrites in processed meat products. In October 2025, new EU rules came into force reducing the maximum permissible levels of nitrites added during the manufacturing of meat products by almost half. The changes came in response to mounting evidence that levels of exposure to nitrite-causing nitrosamines are a health concern for people of all ages with links to an increased risk of cancer. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has yet to follow suit, yet because EU rules on food additives are covered by the agreement (according to a list of legislation in-scope published by Defra in March) it seems reasonable to assume that UK producers of cured ham and bacon will need to fall into line with new EU limits.

Other areas of in-scope food law include rules covering nutrition and health claims, food labelling, and novel foods. Yet plans for alignment come with a caveat. The EU has accepted there will need to be areas where the UK will retain its own rules, according to the government. “We have been clear about the importance of being able to set high animal welfare standards, support public health, and support the use of new and innovative technologies,” noted the Defra statement.

It’s still not clear what exactly that means in practice in areas where UK-EU rules have already diverged – like over nitrites – and in those where steps towards divergence have been made by one side or other since Brexit, such as cell cultivated products, gene editing, descriptions of plant-based foods, and chemical levels in food contact materials.

Talks over potential carve outs are still ongoing between EU and UK negotiators, which helps explain why regulators are unable to provide clear answers on what exactly is in or out of scope (the FSA was contacted by Footprint for this article). Detailed, sector-specific guidance will be published once negotiations conclude, expected later in 2026. All the while the clock ticks down towards a planned mid-2027 deadline for “dynamic alignment”.

‘Uncomfortable period’

The difficult situation facing the FSA was laid bare at its latest board meeting held in March. Chief executive, Katie Pettifer, admitted the agency is going to face a difficult year of engagement with businesses over implementation of the agreement while negotiations are ongoing. “There is going to be a very uncomfortable period where businesses will want to know more, [and] we won’t have the answers,” she said, adding that the FSA is trying to “learn from the questions and work out what we need to answer most critically”.

FSA chair, Susan Jebb, noted how the SPS agreement will affect “every single food business in the entire country because they will need to align with EU rules” and stressed the importance of regulators communicating the changes with businesses, particularly with SMEs.

Dominic Watkins, global head of consumer sector and partner at law firm DWF, draws comparisons with the period following the UK vote to leave the EU in 2016 and the start of the transition period in 2020 when speculation was rife about what a new trading relationship would mean in practice. “The words are easy to say but the practical consequences are legion and it’s not necessarily clear what’s going to happen one way or the other,” he says.

A critical question, according to Watkins, is whether the two parties will align only on rules that were already in place prior to Brexit, or whether divergence that has happened in the intervening years will also be taken into account alongside rules that have been agreed but have yet to come into force. If the latter is true this not only brings into scope rules such as those around nitrite limits but also tighter rules on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) – so-called ‘forever chemicals’ often found in food-to-go packaging like pizza boxes and clamshells. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation prohibits the placing of food contact packaging on the market if it contains PFAS above specific safety thresholds from August 12th 2026 with no transition period.

Novel approach

One of the biggest unanswered questions surrounds the future of novel foods, an area in which the UK has sought to make headway since it became untethered from the notoriously glacial EU authorisation process. UK regulators have on the whole taken a more pragmatic approach in order to expedite approvals for products, like those containing cannabidiol (CBD), that are still banned within the EU. Watkins says he knows of businesses that have been informed by the FSA that their application to approve a novel food has now been put on hold while the details of the UK-EU agreement are worked through. “Are we going to end up with a position where everything that is currently being approved or has already been approved is going to get mutual recognition? Or is [the agreement] going to wipe it away and say it’s no longer applicable? We don’t know the answer to these questions,” he says.

Cell-cultivated products, including meat, is another area where the UK government has looked to smooth the approvals process post-Brexit. Although no cultivated animal product has yet been approved for sale for human consumption, the UK has identified a chance to get ahead of Europe in unlocking the growth potential of an innovative sector by attracting inward investment in production infrastructure. The FSA, in collaboration with Food Standards Scotland, is midway through a ‘sandbox programme’ specifically for cultivated products through which regulators are working with selected businesses and experts to generate insights that will allow them to better guide companies on how to evidence they are making cultivated products in a safe way. Footprint understands work on the sandbox programme will continue as planned until February 2027, when it is due to end regardless of the SPS agreement, however those companies with applications for market authorisation in the current regulatory pipeline (a process separate to the sandbox) could be forgiven for fearing the worst.

What’s in a name?

And what of the recent decision by EU legislators to ban the use of certain descriptions of plant based and cellular agriculture products like chicken, bacon, steak and breast? Marketing standards for foods (set out in the EU’s CMO Regulation) are within scope of the agreement. This raises the prospect of the ban, once it is formalised, covering plant-based meat alternatives sold in the UK, despite little evidence that current descriptions cause confusion among consumers. A recent YouGov survey of the UK public commissioned by The Vegetarian Society found over 90% of respondents (92%) have never bought, or cannot recall buying, a plant-based sausage or burger thinking it contained meat.

The plant-meat marketing question is just one example of how the proposal to realign with EU rules will impact every part of the food supply chain – from farmer to foodservice operator and ultimately the end consumer. The prospect of future cost savings for food imports will surely be welcome by businesses, albeit at a time when reports suggest the UK could face short-term price rises and even potential food shortages due to the war in Iran and continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

For now, businesses must play a waiting game before they can truly weigh up whether regulatory alignment is a price worth paying.