The National Farmers Union of England and Wales (NFU) warned that Brexit without a deal would be “absolutely disastrous” for agriculture and could force farmers to slaughter their livestock.

NFU President Minette Butters said the prospect of losing access to European markets for the British lamb could ruin the industry.

According to her, Brexit without a deal will be "catastrophic" for the agricultural sector as a whole. “That would be socially and economically totally detrimental to this sector,” said Minette Butters.

Using sheep farming as an example, she said that there are 15 million sheep in the UK and the country is the second largest producer of sheep meat in the world.

“This is a high-quality premium protein that we do not consume in the UK in such quantity. For many years, we exported 40% of what we produce to France, where it is recognized as the number one product, French families are in great demand for buying British lamb, ”said Butters.

In the absence of a deal, “not to overcome the tariff wall”, so the meat will not be exported, while imports from New Zealand will continue, creating an excess supply in the UK.

Of course, there is a tariff plan, but farmers will not be able to bring their lamb to the European market, which means that there will be many farmers going out of business in the country, and in fact they will have to look at the slaughter of a rather large percentage of the national number of lambs, ”the president said National Farmers Union of England and Wales.