Dover Council urges to Defra to scrap plans for £3m illegal meat check funding cuts
Dover District Council has called on Defra to scrap its plans to cut funding, worth £3 million, for essential checks for illegal imports at the Port of Dover.
In a DDC report, published ahead of a cabinet meeting today, it has emerged that Defra has tried to justify the cuts by arguing that the council could, instead, recover the costs of the work by charging illegal meat importers. But DDC says Defra has been unable to demonstrate how the service could be self-funding.
Since new rules banning the import of pork products weighing over 2kg not produced to EU commercial standards were introduced in September 2022, DPHA and Border Force UK have seized more than 64 tonnes of illegally imported meat.
Lucy Manzano, head of port health & public protection at Dover District Council, (DDC) told Pig World in January that Defra had informed that council just before Christmas that the budget for this work, introduced to reduce the risk of the African swine fever (ASF) virus entering the UK, was to be cut by up to 70%.
She described the proposed cuts at Dover as potentially ‘disastrous’ for the pig sector, stressing that the councils resources would be severely stretched as the Port Health Authority was also being asked to extend the work to Coquelles, where the Channel Tunnel starts in France.
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