TRADE Secretary Liam Fox has tried to play down fears that any post-Brexit deal with the US would mean allowing chlorine washed chicken to be sold in Britain’s supermarkets.

Reports yesterday suggested there was a Cabinet split over the issue, with sources close to Fox saying that a trade deal with Washington could be scuppered unless his colleagues stopped worrying about chemically cleansed poultry.

Any trade agreement between the two countries would likely require the UK to allow the sale of American agricultural products, including the chemically treated poultry, which has been banned in Europe for 20 years.

Fox, who is in the US, used a question-and-answer session to accuse the media of being obsessed with chlorinated chicken, though he refused to say if he would eat such a thing.

American chickens undergo a “final washing procedure”

after they have been slaughtered, in which their carcasses are treated with antimicrobial rinses in order to remove harmful bacteria.

The EU stopped the sale of American chickens, which are cheaper by about a fifth, in 1997, saying the spraying of chlorine on the chickens at the end of the process was used to compensate for poor hygiene earlier on in the supply chain, basically giving farmers a “get-out” of having to worry about proper practices.

EU processors are only allowed to use cold air and water to decontaminate poultry carcasses.

During a speech to the American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank in Washington, Fox was asked if he would feel comfortable eating a chlorine-washed chicken.

He replied: “In a debate which should be about how we make our contribution to global liberalisation and the increased prosperity of the UK, the US and our trading partners, the complexities of those – the continuity agreements, the short-term gains that we may make, the opportunities we have and our ability to work jointly towards both a free-trade agreement and WTO liberalisation – the British media are obsessed with chlorine-washed chickens, a detail of the very end stage of one sector of a potential free trade agreement. I say no more than that.”

Theresa May’s official spokesman said it was too early to discuss specific details such as chlorinated chicken. He said: “Our position when it comes to food is that maintaining safety and public confidence in the food we eat is of the highest priority. Any future trade deal must work for UK farmers, businesses and consumers.”

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, a leading supporter of the Open Britain campaign, said: “The Government is putting the Fox in charge of the hen coop when it comes to food safety.

“This row about chlorine chicken is a direct result of the Government’s decision to leave the single market. They are so desperate for new trade deals to make up for some of the losses that they seem ready to compromise on the safety of the food we eat.”

In January, Angus Robertson, the then leader of the SNP group at Westminster pressed the Prime Minister on the chlorinated chickens issue, asking her if she was willing to sacrifice “among the highest food safety standards anywhere in the world” for a UK-US trade deal that would see “genetically modified organisms, beef raised using growth hormones and chicken meat washed with chlorinated water” for sale in Britain.

May replied only that the Government would “put UK interests and UK values first”.

During his trip to the States, Fox also claimed growing support in Cabinet for a transitional deal, saying a EU trade deal by March 2019 would be “optimistic”.