It was with great disappointment, but little surprise that I read this morning that local Conservative MP, Jesse Norman, has voted against the Parish Amendment which would have guaranteed standards of food imported from the United States and other countries as part of any trade agreement. What Mr Norman has failed to take into account is the fact that by allowing countries like the United States to import chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-fed beef, he is essentially signing the death warrant for traditional farmers in the Herefordshire area. There is no way that they will ever be able to compete on an equal footing with vast multinational conglomerates that see animals as nothing more than commodities that can be treated as appallingly as is imaginable without any regard to their suffering as long as they turn a profit. Furthermore, he also disregards the safety of consumers. One only needs a cursory glance at the worrying number of deaths due to bacterial outbreaks, a direct result of factory farming methods, in countries where standards such as those outlined in the Parish Amendment are disregarded. Gareth Mitchell Hereford