Dover Port Health Authority has confirmed it seized 2.5 tonnes of illegal pork products from 22 vehicles checked over a single weekend at the beginning of October. The discovery occurred during a multi-agency exercise at the port – part of the work to reduce the risk of African swine fever entering the country.
https://www.farmersguide.co.uk/serious- ... -at-dover/
There's also an article in The Times but it's behind a paywall.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/magg ... -gm6lgv0w5
Following Brexit food safety checks on imports coming to the UK became the responsibility of the UK government and unfortunately not only are they not being carried out now we don't have the infrastructure to carry them out, we don't have the staff to carry them out and with looming cuts in spending we aren't likely to develop that capacity anytime soon.
If this one-off inspection is anything to go by that means vast amounts of unsafe food are being sold into the British market.
To counter the obvious. The EU has no control over what is shipped to the UK, we are a third party country with our own food safety and biosecurity regulations. The EU exports to countries where food safety standards are much different and it's up to all third party countries to enforce their own rules. This means since leaving the Single Market the UK no longer shares food safety inspections with the EU, and the ERG led Conservatives specifically voted down amendments that would have put such measures in place.
As we have neither the capacity, the infrastructure nor the ability to do these checks for ourselves we should reach an agreement to keep food safety standards aligned and share inspections with the EU.
