This week is a big week for Brexiteers.

This week marks the start of our new trading relationship with Australia and New Zealand. Whilst we have signed around 60 so-called roll-over deals, where, for the sake of continuity, we merely cut and pasted the EU deal across to the UK, these two deals were initiated after we left the EU. These are the first of the Brexit dividends.

They are incredibly important. Because the UK government doesn’t have a single negotiating strategy for international trade deals, these two deals set the tone for every subsequent deal we negotiate. Every trade partner entering a deal with the UK will legitimately compare theirs with the Australia and NZ ones.

We have secured access for manufactured goods, services exports – including financial services, which we are brilliant at – and food exports. But these come at a price, and we have, of course, allowed access for our antipodean friends to our own domestic markets. As a very well-respected trade negotiator once told me, you only know you’ve done a good deal when both sides are equally disappointed (by the other side’s access to one’s markets).

So, are we equally disappointed? Not according to former DEFRA Secretary of State George Eustace. Eustace argues that access granted to Australian and New Zealand meat producers undermines our own domestic producers. In 15 years, they will have unlimited access and the NFU – the farmers’ trade body – argues that here in the UK, we impose animal rearing standards that they do not in Australia and NZ. Our farmers are at a competitive disadvantage. George was incredibly scathing about then Trade Secretary Liz Truss, suggesting she threw British farmers under the bus in her enthusiasm to get a deal over the line by an arbitrary date.

She may well have done, but here in lies one of the quandaries about trade deals. Because of our high standards, it costs more to produce meat here. But one of the Brexit dividends was more choice. So, should we be forcing people to pay Waitrose prices when there is a cheaper alternative, even if that undermines our own producers? People are struggling with food bills, so what is the greater imperative?

This argument will only get louder as we strike more and more trade deals with countries that produce similar items to those produced here: What price food security over consumer choice?