Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of biosecurity checks on imported meat.

The Government published the Border Target Operating Model (TOM) ON 05 April 2023. In developing the TOM, we have designed a modern border with a simplified, effective, risk-based system of controls based on current assessments of risks to biosecurity. It will strike the appropriate balance between protecting the UK’s public health, food supply chains and natural environment, and setting a proportionate controls regime. The TOM will operate a more sophisticated approach to risk categorisation than the EU’s 3rd country model, with the intensity of controls calibrated to the level of risk presented by each commodity, and the country of origin. This will be underpinned independent and dynamic risk assessments which respond to changing risks. For high-risk and medium-risk goods, including POAO products in those categories, we will retain health certification and BCP inspection, albeit with frequently lower inspection rates than under the EU model.