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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 11 November 2024 to Question 12669 on Animal Products: Smuggling, if he will make an assessment of the likelihood of (a) banned and (b) African swine fever infected meat entering the UK via commercial channels without being intercepted at Sevington.

Meat imported commercially via Border Control Posts is subject to local authority-led official controls to ensure that it complies with UK import conditions. The Home Office’s Border Force has lead responsibility for identifying and seizing meat imported illegally other than via Border Control Posts.

Defra monitors animal disease outbreaks worldwide and assesses the risk that they might enter the United Kingdom (UK) through legal or illegal trade in animal products. Its team of veterinary and risk experts provide rapid outbreak assessments to inform import decisions and enforcement action and undertake full qualitative risk assessments in certain cases. These assessments are published on gov.uk at www.gov.uk/government/collections/animal-diseases-international-monitoring. The African swine fever (ASF) assessments consider the likelihood of banned and ASF-infected meat entering the UK without interception and are used to review and strengthen, where necessary, measures to prevent the disease reaching the UK.

To further mitigate the risks, it is illegal in the UK to feed catering or domestic food waste to livestock, including pigs.