Dover Port inspectors warn funding cuts risk UK food safety

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Health inspectors at Dover, the UK’s busiest port, have warned they are facing a 70 per cent cut in central government funding that will pose a risk to British food safety and animal health.

The Dover Port Health Authority told the Financial Times that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs planned to impose the funding cut to its inspection team from April.

“The impact of the cuts will be significant and increase the threat to GB safety by an order of magnitude,” said DPHA head Lucy Manzano.

Since the UK left the EU in 2020, the government has relied in large part on checks carried out on the continent to ensure goods coming into the country are compliant with EU standards.

The inspection team at the DPHA, which is part of Dover District Council, was set up in 2022 to screen for pork contaminated with African Swine Fever (ASF).

New post-Brexit border controls are due to come into force in April after being delayed five times.

The UK’s “Border Target Operating Model” will involve the transfer of most health checks on food arriving at Dover and through the Channel Tunnel to a single border control post in Sevington, 22 miles inland.

The DPHA warned the new measures could increase the risk of the spread of disease, because the government had not yet shown how officials would ensure goods arrive for checks at Sevington after leaving Dover.

“We believe that the proposals to move controls away from [Dover] is in effect opening a new door,” added Manzano. “We’re not taking back control of our border, we’re removing the border control.”

About 40 DPHA inspectors work alongside the UK’s border force to identify potentially diseased, illegal and undeclared meat at Dover.

Manzano said the government expected the DPHA to continue ASF checks at Dover and begin checks at the Channel Tunnel in spite of the funding cut and even after the creation of the post at Sevington.

She said the government had not explained “how the disease risk will be mitigated with significantly fewer resources”.

A spokesperson for the department for environment, food and rural affairs said: “Work is under way with the Food Standards Agency to ensure there are robust procedures in place for goods arriving at Sevington — an established border facility — to ensure there is absolutely no compromise on food safety or biosecurity.”

DPHA staff have seized more than 57 tonnes of illegal meat since the ASF checks were introduced in September 2022.

The disease is currently spreading through herds in some European countries. On Saturday morning, the team seized more than a tonne of pork from just three vehicles that was largely intended for commercial use.

“If [ASF] lands in the UK it will devastate our farming community, result in national culling programmes, reputational damage, export bans, and the list goes,” Manzano said. 

The UK’s National Pig Association said that the volumes of illegal meat being seized were “deeply worrying” and that the cost of living crisis was contributing to a growing black market for meat in the UK.

“As we know from the regular emergence of ASF in new areas across Europe . . . it will only take one incident of a piece of infected meat reaching a pig to bring the entire pig industry to its knees,” said NPA chief executive Lizzie Wilson.