Did food standards desync between the UK and EU considerably since Brexit? I doubt that loosening food standards happen in general, but I can imagine newer EU food standards that are not copied over to the UK.
It doesn't matter. When people see "not for EU" in a label, what they understand is "not for EU because it doesn't meet the EU requirements", which implies that the EU has higher requirements which aren't being met by that product. And a further implication (understandable since brexit means "we don't have to follow the EU requirements anymore") is that the EU requirements haven't changed, but the UK requirements have, and the product only follows these new lower requirements.
> Shoppers can rest assured, however, that the labels do not denote a reduction in standards. Aside from some divergence on pesticides, British food standards so far remain largely unchanged since Brexit.
/edit: apparently I stand corrected.
Complicating the issue is Northern Ireland which effectively falls under the jurisdiction of both. If British products need to be sold there, they need to be distinguishable somehow from the versions that are allowed to leave Northern Ireland into the rest of the EU.
That combination of shared jurisdiction and lack of trade infrastructure is how you get these labels. Its the laziest solution to a self-imposed problem.
The eu regulations no longer apply to food companies operating in the UK, as the UK no longer is in eu-jurisdiction.
The uk govt would have to re-implement them one by one, which a) would be a considerable effort and b) defeats the point of brexit, and thus likely come at political costs.
/edit: thanks for the responses, TIL.
You have it backwards. They have to de-implement them in order to get rid of them. The EU doesn't have federal laws in the way that the US does, each law is independently implemented in each member state.
This is better than the alternative, which would basically not having any national standards until they developed their own, but you are right that it basically means brexit has mostly increased the amount of paperwork and friction in trading but not actually produced material benefits for most industries in the UK. And in general it makes sense to follow the EU for most standards anyway: if you diverge too much you risk people just not bothering to sell in your country anyway. There's already stupid headaches like this: for EMC certification, if you need a lab to do some tests to sell in the UK and the EU, you currently need to get a lab in the UK and a lab in the EU to perform the exact same tests to the exact same standards. This means a lot of EU companies are just not bothering to certify their products for the UK market (customers will often just import them illegally).