The environment secretary has refused to rule out chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef being imported from the US in a post-Brexit trade deal.

George Eustice, who was made secretary in the recent reshuffle also defended the government’s new immigration system, after businesses raised fears of a shortage of workers.

His predecessor had insisted the controversial meat products from the US would not be imported amid animal welfare and environmental fears.

But Eustice, while saying there are “no plans” to change the law, did not explicitly rule it out when pressed three times on the subject.

With the government expected to publish its negotiating position for a free trade deal with Washington within two weeks, he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday that the government would not “take risks” on standards of welfare.

But he said “lactic acid washes” are now more commonly used in the US than chlorine, which is unlikely to allay fears over animal welfare because concerns centre on treatment before the washes themselves.

“What I’m saying is we won’t make any moves on our standards, we’ve got a clear position in this country that it is illegal to sell chlorine-washed chicken, illegal to sell beef treated with hormones, we have no plans to change those things,” he said.

Theresa Villiers, who was relegated from leading the environment department to the backbenches in Boris Johnson’s reshuffle, had been explicit in January that the EU laws banning chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef would be adopted here.

“There are legal barriers to their import and those are going to stay in place,” she added.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ food and rural affairs spokesman, accused the Conservatives of having backed down on their commitment.

“Farming communities up and down the country are rightly concerned about being undercut by low-standard imports from the US,” he said.

“With the Tories’ desperation for a trade deal with Donald Trump, it would appear they are rolling back on their promises. They are wilfully threatening British consumers and farmers.”

The government’s immigration plans set out on Wednesday are designed to cut the number of low-skilled migrants entering the UK, drawing criticism from businesses who have said the move could choke the necessary supply of workers. 

Eustice, who used to run a strawberry farm, stressed a seasonal agricultural workers scheme will be an “important part of immigration policy in the future”.

He said there would be a quadrupling of the size of the scheme to 10,000 initially this year, but this still falls short of National Farmers’ Union calls for 70,000.

Eustice said ministers would be working out a “fully fledged” programme for the future.

Home secretary Priti Patel had suggested lower-skilled jobs could be filled by eight million people classed as “economically inactive”.

But she drew criticism after it was pointed out that the Office for National Statistics estimates most of these are students, long-term sick, carers or retired.

“I don’t think the Home Secretary was saying that all eight million of those people would be able to fill these, just that there are people there who might,” he told Sky.