How the sausage illustrates the issues surrounding UK's membership of the EU

Here's a short but interesting video from the BBC illustrating how the issues surrounding the humble sausage demonstrate some of the concerns that arise from the UK's EU membership.

The clip says that the UK has some of the most stringent regulations on animal welfare causing the cost of producing (in this case) pork meat to be relatively high compared to other EU nations. For example, the UK's Animal Welfare Act of 2006 insists that farmers house pigs in a 'suitable' environment. As we belong to the EU, we are unable to use measures such as tariffs or quotas to force an increase in the price of EU-produced foods to enable the UK version to remain competitive even within the UK borders.

The counter argument to this, however, is that the stringent welfare rules that the UK adopts are being taken up, albeit slowly, by the rest of the EU. The UK would not have the influence to impact on these region-wide changes if it were not a member of the EU.