Food and Drink Federation bosses in Brexit meeting

A spokeswoman told FoodManufacture.co.uk today: “The FDF’s executive committee will meet today and will consider, among other things, the results of a membership survey on the forthcoming EU referendum.”​

Two potential outcomes of the meeting could be to actively campaign against Brexit – Britain’s exit from the EU – or to retain the organisation’s recent non aligned status.

Divided business leaders​

In recent months the FDF has been careful to retain its non aligned status over the debate that has divided business leaders and the prime minister David Cameron’s cabinet.

However, the overwhelming majority of food and drink manufacturing bosses at the Food Manufacture Group’s Business Leaders’ Forum in January backed Britain’s continued EU membership.

Last week a series of high profile business bosses – including senior executives from Unilever, Diageo, Unilever and Wyke Farms​ – joined nearly 200 signatories in a letter to The Times calling for the UK to retain its EU membership.

10 years of ‘uncertainty’​

Meanwhile, Britain faces at least 10 years of “uncertainty” ​if the UK votes to leave the EU, according to a government assessment.

Negotiating the exit, involving the 27 remaining EU member states, would be complex and difficult to achieve inside the official two-year time frame, warned the Cabinet Office report.

Last weekend the G20 group – representing the world’s biggest 20 economies – warned that a  UK decision to leave the EU would cause an economic shock that would impact the global economy

But former UK  chancellor and Vote Leave chairman Lord Lawson dismissed the claims.

“The British people will not take kindly to being told by the G20 what they should do. And the notion that the UK leaving the EU would cause an economic shock is absurd,”​ he said.

“Fifteen of the members of the G20 are outside the EU, and that hasn’t caused an economic shock. Indeed, most of them are doing better than most of the members of the European Union.”​