UK bans personal imports of pork to prevent ASF

Those found to bring pork or pork products illegally may be fined up to £5,000 in England. Products will be seized and destroyed on arrival. The only exception are products manufactured and packaged to EU commercial standards that weigh less than a maximum of 2kg.

The new safeguarding rules will help protect UK livestock by mitigating its spread across the border to the UK, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says. An outbreak of ASF could have a significant impact on the UK’s £8 billion pig industry, as well as its annual pork and pork product exports worth £600 million. It is estimated that an outbreak could cost the UK between £10 million to £100 million.  

Biosecurity Minister Baroness Hayman said:  ‘’African Swine Fever is a deadly disease wreaking havoc in Europe.  These new measures will protect British pig farmers and pork products, preventing infected meat from being brought over the border and threatening our biosecurity. The UK has never had an outbreak of ASF, and commercial meat imports are routinely checked at the border to ensure infected goods do not reach UK shores. Preventing an outbreak of ASF in the UK remains one of Defra’s key biosecurity priorities, and it keeps policy on personal meat and dairy imports under constant review.’’

The National Pig Association NPA has welcomed Defra’s efforts to tighten up the rules governing personal pork imports but has warned the measures do not go as far as it would have liked. Chief executive Lizzie Wilson said: “We welcome Defra’s recognition of the threat African Swine Fever poses to the UK pork sector and its efforts to tighten up the rules on bringing personal imports into the UK. However, we called for a total ban on personal imports to make the rules easier to understand and enforce, so we would have liked to have seen today’s announcement go further. We are concerned that, as drafted, there will still be some confusion over exactly what the rules require and they will still be very difficult to enforce.”

Wilson continues: ‘’We also have to stress that these changes do not address the real issue of concern, which is the vast quantities of illegally imported pork entering the country in vans and other vehicles by organised criminals. The previous government slashed funding for the work of the Dover Port Health Authority in carrying out these ASF checks and we continue to call on the current government to provide sufficient resource for this work.”