Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Brigg and Immingham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what additional resource has been allocated to UK border force to (a) provide communications to the public on and (b) increase surveillance of imported meat products from areas affected by African swine fever.
Answered by David Rutley
Defra is working with Border Force to focus communications on passengers travelling through ports and airports when returning to the UK from the EU and Asia. We are in the process of developing a set of communications that will be distributed across UK ports and airports informing people of the disease risk and asking that they do not bring personal pork imports into the UK. These messages will be communicated through a combination of posters, leaflets, and social media.
Defra and the Animal and Plant Health Agency routinely provide UK Border Force with information and risk assessments on countries where there is a heightened risk of animal diseases such as African swine fever. The information is used to target the specially trained sniffer dogs to detect illegally imported meat and high risk products of animal origin. Defra is currently working with UK Border Force to improve this intelligence sharing and targeting.
Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Brigg and Immingham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has made an economic assessment of the potential effect of African Swine Fever being identified in the UK on (a) the public purse and (b) pig producers’ incomes.
Answered by David Rutley
The Government has estimated that the economic effect of a reasonable worst case scenario outbreak of African Swine Fever could cost the UK up to £90 million at 2019 prices. This total estimate includes costs to the industry of up to £85 million, which reflects the lost value of animals from culling, movement bans and trade restrictions, and costs of up to £5 million for the Government for disease control activities.
While this estimate represents an informed assessment of the potential impact of an outbreak, exact costs would be determined by a large number of factors including geographic location, the husbandry system, epidemiology of the outbreak and whether wildlife was involved.
Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Brigg and Immingham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Government has plans to strengthen biosecurity arrangements on imported meat products after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by David Rutley
Our high biosecurity standards are of critical importance to the UK and we are committed to ensure those standards are maintained when we leave the UK.
As a member of the European Union we share standards of biosecurity with other Member States. This has facilitated the free movement of these goods between member states.
In the short term those standards will not change. Therefore, to ensure minimum disruption at the borders, we will not introduce new import controls on these goods imported from the EU.
To ensure we remain vigilant, we will require advance notification of imports of high-risk food and feed from the EU. This includes products of animal origin and high-risk food and feed not of animal origin. The Food Standards Agency will be in a position to monitor those notifications so that in the event of a food incident occurring involving imported food or feed, it will be able to respond effectively to safeguard public health by swiftly identifying the point of entry to the UK and the spread of a problem. We will also be reviewing our imports regime once we leave the EU.
For imports from countries outside the EU we will maintain the current controls and consignments of animal products will continue to be required to enter at Border Inspection Posts for veterinary checks. Notification will be required using the UK Import of Products, Animals and Food and Feed System. These controls will also apply to products of animal origin that come from outside the EU but travel through the EU before arriving in the UK.