ENVIRONMENT Secretary Liz Truss has been on the EU referendum campaign trail visiting one of Somerset's biggest food manufacturers.

Mrs Truss took a trip to Wyke Farms on Thursday, where she highlighted the how the business thriving business relies on the EU for a large quantity of its business.

Demand for Wyke's award-winning cheddar is growing rapidly in France, with sales up by 30 per cent last year.

France alone bought £59 million of British cheese, which is gaining a growing reputation across the continent for its quality and taste.

The Government claim that outside the EU, cheese producers like Wyke Farms could face crippling tariffs of up to 30 per cent to sell their produce to Europe, costing an additional £169million per year and meaning EU consumers would pay much higher prices for our cheese.

Speaking as she visited Wyke Farms’ dairy, Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said: “With a huge £330 million of cheese exports going to Europe it’s clear Somerset dairy farmers and producers are stronger, safer and better off as part of a reformed EU.

“Wyke Farms is a prime example of a farm business taking advantage of our tariff-free access to the world’s largest single market of 500 million customers to export their high-quality produce.”

Having launched a new British-themed brand to specifically target their export customers, Wyke Farms values the fact that wherever they sell their produce in the EU, the label requirements are exactly the same.

Based in the centre of the cheddar-making region in Somerset, Wyke Farms sources its milk from its own herd which grazes the Mendip Hills, as well as directly from 150 other farms, and employs 250 people, making this 150-year-old family business a crucial part of the rural economy.

Richard Clothier, MD of Wyke Farms, said: “My family have been farming here in Somerset for over 150 years and I’m immensely proud of how we have thrived in recent years as we’ve been able to sell Somerset produce all over the continent.

“Leaving the EU puts our free market trade at risk; the current arrangement gives us access to a market more than twice the size of the US and the ability to trade within it under just one set of regulations. Changing this would be disabling for business, not empowering. We have an ambitious five-year growth plan for our business and leaving Europe in the coming years will jeopardise that.”