So this is an interesting one, and much more technical than the usual food standards debate: https://www.ft.com/content/30e9db6a-14dd-4c78-af6a-4d64e6ad4723

This is the issue the US has with the EU (and currently the UK) approach to standard setting:

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2020_National_Trade_Estimate_Report.pdf#page181

TL;DR - the EU has moved towards creating single European industrial standards, while US has plethora of standard setting bodies.

While is technically possible for US standards to be recognised in EU, in practice it’s too complicated and everyone just uses the European standard.

US also doesn’t like that EU is exporting its model to neighbouring countries, and via its FTAs.

US will push in FTA for a process by which US standards are more readily recognised as equivalent to UK’s (again, possible even now, but arduous).

The issue from a UK perspective is that the US approach to standard setting is a mess with multiple different standards, whereas EU is pretty simple.

However, my feeling is UK has already conceded the point here. Desire is to create a UK standard, and move away from European (at least to my knowledge). However in all likelihood European standards will continue to be recognised in UK too.

And once you accept European as equivalent, and de facto move away from a single standard model (UK, and European in this case), then hard to justify not accepting US too, or at least making the process for acceptance much easier.

However ... in practice I’m not sure how much of a difference this will make. Companies prefer using European Standards for a reason (far less complicated and readily accepted across the continent), and that isn’t going to change.

Anyway, there is a lot of nuance I’ve missed there but my baby is screaming at me.

Turns out she just wanted to show off.