The UK is critically exposed to the threat of illegal meat and dairy imports, with “alarming” amounts of potentially unsafe product making its way into the country via porous border controls, MPs have warned.
Amid soaring seizure levels of illegal product at the UK border, there was “currently no effective deterrent to smuggling”, warned the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s new report, Biosecurity at the Border: Britain’s Illegal Meat Crisis, published today (8 September).
And with meat and dairy products flooding into the country for both personal consumption and for sale, the UK’s food security was at risk, the often-damning report added, with the threat of a “major” animal disease outbreak from illegal imports a very real prospect and a “national security issue”.
Some of the most serious animal diseases, such as foot and mouth disease and African swine fever, could travel long distances and cross borders in contaminated meat and dairy products.
However, MPs on the committee found “there is currently no identifiable or effective ownership of the issue of illegal meat smuggling”, as they called on Defra to create a strategy for product of animal origin smuggling – in collaboration with the FSA’s National Food Crime Unit, the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit, port health authorities, inland local authorities and UK Border Force.
Issues at the border
Drawing on Border Force data, the report revealed the weight of national seizures of illegal products of animal origin (POAO) at the UK frontier had risen by 83.6% to 235 tonnes, between 2022 and 2024.
But with standardised, directly comparable data not readily available, the actual amount of illegal POAO could be much higher, the research suggested, pointing to how border officials were now undertaking significantly less seizures (at 2,600) – due to staffing issues – than in 2004, when the average amount of meat illegally entering GB from non-EU countries alone stood at just under 12,000 tonnes.
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The UK’s busiest seaport Dover had particularly “acute” issues, the Efra paper revealed, with the Dover Port Health Authority understaffed by a “dedicated but demoralised” and underfunded team of between 20 and 30 people.
Full inspections of meat and dairy products required between four and six people and were “labour-intensive, time-consuming, manual work”, where workers described being verbally abused, filmed and posted on social media by drivers and passengers of vehicles.
In complex cases, it could take up to 10 hours to inspect a lorry and seven hours to inspect a car, the report added, while DPHA staff also had to contend with insufficient space to conduct checks at the port.
This led to a grudging acceptance by staff that they were allowing a significant proportion of vehicles through without sufficient inspection.
“DPHA workers describe a sense of futility that while they are conducting checks ‘there are literally hundreds of targeted vehicles driving straight past as we do not have the resources to stop and search’,” the report added.
“On some ferries, especially overnight when tickets are cheapest, DPHA estimates there to be over 50 vans containing illegal animal products and that at least 40 of those will drive through unchecked.”
Furthermore, the head of port health and public protection at DPHA had voiced concerns that Border Force’s inspection sheds were not a ‘contained’ environment to conduct POAO inspections in, “and that this presents a risk to biosecurity within the context of risks like foot and mouth and African swine fever”.
The report pointed to one testimony from a technical officer who described the presentations of animal products that he and other DPHA officers are handling in inspection sheds.
“I have seen blood leeching from packages delivered in eastern European ‘post’ vans full of car parts, dirt, mould, various dirty containers and buckets filled with the body parts of home-slaughtered pigs, other livestock and rancid unchilled dairy products,” the officer said.
“I found an entire pig stuffed inside a suitcase, its legs cut off badly so it could fit inside. Not a professionally butchered animal.”
Illegal meat imports rise as officials warn of weak Brexit border controls
Defra’s role
Through the course of its inquiry, the Committee also experienced “firsthand the dysfunctional relationship between Defra and DPHA”, the report read.
“The minister for biosecurity acknowledged that Defra and DPHA ‘need to get to a situation where we have better communications and understanding between us’,” it added. “The minister told us that she does not know why the relationship broke down as it was already damaged when she took office.”
Efra Committee MPs had welcomed Defra’s ban – following a foot and mouth disease outbreak in Germany in the spring – on personal imports of most meat and dairy from the EU.
However, they warned the ban had been “toothless”, with prohibited animal products continuing to enter the UK through airports, sea ports and Eurotunnel in parcels, personal baggage, and vehicles.
The report stated that criminal enterprises were using the personal import routes to smuggle in large quantities of illegal meat for sale around the country “with impunity”.
Illegally imported meat and dairy products were then being sold online and via door-to-door sales to households and businesses – with illicit products found in markets, shops, takeaways and hospitality venues where consumers “trust that the food they are buying is safe and meets high welfare standards”.
But despite the clear threat to food safety, Efra warned the government’s understanding of the nature and sophistication of this criminal enterprise was limited.
“Every day, vans laden with undeclared, unhygienic and unrefrigerated meat are rolling through our ports for distribution and sale in Britain,” said Efra chair Alistair Carmichael MP.
“The authorities tasked with tackling this wave of illegal produce find themselves without the necessary leadership, resources and intelligence to do so,” he added.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horsemeat scandal. A still bigger concern is the very real risk of a major animal disease outbreak. The single case of foot and mouth disease in Germany this year, most likely caused by illegally imported meat, cost its economy one billion euros.”
Issues at the border had been building over a number of years under successive governments, warned Carmichael.
“We are calling on this government to get a grip on what has become a crisis, by establishing a national taskforce with proper leadership and a strategy, boosting food crime intelligence networks, creating and enforcing real deterrents to tackle the criminal enterprises involved, and equipping port health and local authorities with the resources and the powers they need.”
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