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Labour say food standards could be slashed after a US-UK trade deal - and that we could all end up eating rat hair and drinking maggots.

Jeremy Corbyn used that claim to attack the Conservatives last week, saying: "Given the chance, they'll slash food standards to match those of the United States, where what are called 'acceptable levels' of rat hairs in paprika, and maggots in orange juice are allowed."

Is that true? And it if is, should we be worried?

With our factchecking partners Full Fact, we looked at the evidence.

The idea that US food is packed with foreign bodies comes from a US Food and Drug Administration handbook, which lists the maximum contamination level for everyday foods in quite graphic detail.

It says ground paprika can't have an "average of more than 11 rodent hairs per 25 grams".

Whole ginger can't have 3 milligrams or more of mammal excrement per pound.

And yes - orange juice can't contain more than 1 maggot per 250 millilitres.

This means that a standard supermarket bottle could have 3 maggots!

So Labour's claims are technically correct - but do they fairly represent the facts?

Not according to the FDA, which says these levels of contamination "pose no inherent hazard to health".

And that these levels aren't "acceptable" in the sense of OK, but instead mark the point where they'll step in and take action.

Which brings us to Labour's bigger argument: that US standards are lower than UK ones, because they allow this sort of contamination in the first place.

Of course, this is really an argument about Brexit and whether we'll be eating more US food if we leave the EU single market.

Labour - who want to see Britain remain in a customs union - are keen to highlight the drawbacks of this.

In some areas, the UK does have more stringent food standards than the US.

You may have heard about using chlorine to wash chicken, something that's allowed in the US but banned in the UK.

There also seem to be many more instances of food poisoning in the US, although there are no reliable exact comparisons, and it's not clear if that's as a result of food standards rather than other reasons.

But in the case of maggoty orange juice, things aren't so clear, because the UK and EU don't use limits as a justification for action, except in the case of a number of harmful chemical contaminants.

This means there's no allowable limits of foreign bodies in food and no official list of icky substances to creep everyone out.

So despite what Labour are saying, you can't really compare the UK and the US.

Although there might be legitimate concerns about food standards after a free trade deal with the US, it's not right to imply our orange juice is less maggoty.

Sorry to break it to you if that's your Brexit red line - but in any scenario, we may just have to swallow it.

Campaign Check scrutinises election claims made by political parties, examining if they are true or false, and the context. Sky News is working with Full Fact - the leading independent fact-checking charity.

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