Travellers to aid illegal meat crackdown

100kg of illegal meat is found on each flight into the UK

Farmers are enlisting the help of holiday-makers in an attempt to stop illegal meat imports flooding into Britain.

Thousands of pre-paid postcards will be handed to travellers passing through ports and airports, as part of a campaign to try to prove that not enough is being done to stamp out the illicit trade.

It is thought meat obtained from outside the European Union could have caused last year's devastating foot-and-mouth epidemic, and before that an outbreak of swine fever.

Farmers want to know if passengers arriving in the UK are being properly checked for illegal imports

Ben Gill
NFU president

The 10,000 cards will invite passengers to tell the National Farmers Union (NFU) how much they are aware of the risk posed, as well as the extent of publicity and physical searching they were exposed to at ports of entry.

The first are due to be handed out at three airports on Thursday - Heathrow, Stansted, and Cardiff International.

The NFU believes the replies will expose major failings and force the UK Government into taking tougher action.

Monkey carcass

Ben Gill, NFU president, said: "Farmers want to know if passengers arriving in the UK are being properly checked for illegal imports and if they are being properly warned about the need to surrender food and meat that may be a disease risk."

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is putting two sniffer dogs into Heathrow airport to help find illicit meat from abroad.

And BBC correspondent Richard Wells said the seizure of a smoked monkey carcass from a Eurostar train at Waterloo indicated successes are taking place.

Farmers say a much greater effort is needed to reduce the risk of a further foot-and-mouth outbreak, and the destruction of thousands of British livestock.

Smuggling

John Taylor, of the NFU, said the existing efforts were inadequate.

He pointed out that Australia has 80 dogs at its airports.

Figures released in February, a year after the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, showed an average of 100kg of illegal meat was being smuggled on each flight into the UK.

Under current law, it is legal to import food from outside the EU - including one kilo of cooked meat, one kilo of fish and one kilo of milk powder.

But the government is trying to change this European law to ban holidaymakers from bringing any food into the UK.