The UK Parliamentary Committee on Environment Food and Rural Affairs published their latest report on border checks of imported meat earlier this month. The report is driven by biosecurity and disease control concerns but is also relevant to illegal food trade.
The Committee is critical of the organisation and effectiveness of biosecurity checks currently in place in UK ports, and of a lack of central co-ordination.
They report that responsibility for tackling illegal meat imports is divided across Government departments, enforcement agencies and local authorities. They found no strategic approach coordinating efforts and no leadership figure spearheading operations. This has been the case under successive governments.
The committee's view is that the stated UK approach of “intelligence led checks” obscures the reality on the ground: a limited and incomplete intelligence network, strained enforcement capability, and port facilities unsuitable for seizing significant volumes of potentially contaminated meat
It is the Committee’s view that the UK has avoided recent disease outbreak from illegally imported meat by luck rather than design.
