Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Seventh Report


Conclusions

36. The Government's Action Plan has been generally welcomed. The Association of Port Health Authorities thought that "the Government has done an awful lot in the last year to improve on the situation as it existed".[104] However, organisations that have welcomed the general thrust of the Plan have criticisms of specific aspects of it.

37. We too broadly welcome the Action Plan as an important first step but, in addition to the comments we have already made, we would reiterate our concern about the overall co-ordination of the Government's approach to the issue of illegal meat imports. We are concerned about the long delay between the problem being acknowledged by Government - action was being considered in March 2001 - and substantive action being taken a year later. Indeed, it seems that without the prompting of and bringing together of interested parties by the National Farmers' Union, the forum on illegal meats which agreed the Action Plan may never have come together.

38. However, since the Action Plan was published we have generally been impressed with the speed with which the Government and stakeholders have acted to address the various elements of the Plan. We hope that the publication of the risk assessment in September will provide another stimulus to take the Plan further forward with urgency.

39. Our main recommendations are:

    (a)  We agree that risk will never be eliminated, and that proportionate steps need to be taken (paragraph 9).

    (b)  The degree of uncertainty about the scale of the problem at the border, particularly if greater certainty can be achieved through the risk assessment about other points on the 'pathway', such as preventing a disease spreading to animals, may mean that changes to policy focus on, for example, the farm gate rather than the port of entry. Nevertheless, we recommend that the Government continue to retain and upgrade the information it gathers about illegal meat imports to enable it to keep the results of its risk assessment under review (paragraph 12).

    (c)  We therefore recommend that full details of the risk assessment, including assumptions made and information that would improve the assumptions, are published with the risk assessment so that it is clear to all stakeholders why particular actions are pursued. Whatever measures are agreed they must not be seen as an alternative to effective bio-security at home (paragraph 13).

    (d)  We believe that the Food Standards Agency should re-examine its decision not to undertake a risk assessment on the human health implications of illegal meat imports in parallel with the current study (paragraph 14).

    (e)  We recommend that the costs considered when assessing new policies to deal with illegal meat imports do not just include those faced by Government, but also those faced by the whole food chain. To put any measures into context there were more than 60 million passenger movements through Heathrow alone last year. This demonstrates the scale of the tasks involved and the risk/benefit relationship (paragraph 15).

    (f)  The United Kingdom Government must enter into international discussions aimed at ensuring effective monitoring of the export trade in order to bear down on any illegality. To assist such discussions it must demonstrate that its own house is in order, by making sure that inspections of exports from the United Kingdom are effective. We are moreover pleased that port health authority officers already have some form of system for advising each other of developments but are concerned that it is not centrally co-ordinated - we hope that the establishment of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs's Illegal Animal Products Seizures (ILAPS) database will assist this process (paragraph 16).

    (g)  Granting the power to stop people to port health authority officers is not entirely straightforward. Nevertheless, we recognise the strength of the case made for such new powers. We therefore welcome the fact that the powers available to port health authority officers will be reviewed, and we recommend that the Government report the outcome of that review to Parliament within a year (paragraph 17).

    (h)  We are concerned that no guidance was issued with the new powers. At the very least draft guidance should have been prepared, to help officers understand the new powers available to them, on the understanding that detailed guidance would be based on that draft guidance and experience of how the new powers worked. We hope that the new guidance published in August will address our concerns, and that it will be regularly reviewed and updated to take account of the experience of using the new powers (paragraph 18).

    (i)  We ask that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explain that delay [in putting in place new Regulations] (paragraph 19).

    (j)  We recommend that the Government assess the costs and benefits of this proposal against the findings of the risk assessment (paragraph 20).

    (k)  The current allowances for personal imports of food, particularly meat and fish, are very confusing. We therefore firmly support the Government in their objective of securing a ban on the personal import of meat products. However, if the European Union does not bring forward better and more effective measures to deal with this potential abuse the United Kingdom should give notice that it will introduce unilateral action (paragraph 23).

    (l)  We believe that it is in the airports', the airlines' and the Government's interest to have passengers flowing freely at airports and believe that the greater availability of information and consequent lesser need for checks of passengers would facilitate this (paragraph 24).

    (m)  We believe that the provision of information in-flight is essential, and we recommend that the Government urgently seek to persuade airlines to distribute written leaflets, and show videos as appropriate, setting out the restrictions on personal imports of meat and other foods. If airlines will not do so voluntarily we recommend that the Government take steps to obtain legal powers to compel them to do so (paragraph 25).

    (n)  Although we welcome the trial use of dogs to detect illegal meat imports it would be helpful if the Government were to publish the objectives of the pilot scheme and the criteria against which its success will be judged (paragraph 27).

    (o)  We accept that there are limitations and problems with the proposals to use x-ray equipment and provide amnesty bins, but we agree with Lord Whitty that both could be valuable in raising public awareness. We therefore recommend that both be carefully piloted and assessed for their efficacy in terms of addressing the problem of illegal meat imports and of raising public awareness of the problem (paragraph 28).

    (p)  We agree. In the longer-term there is a case for greater integration of agencies and management, and we recommend that Government bring forward a model of a single agency. In the medium term agencies should commit themselves to improving the way they work together. In the short term it would be helpful if the terms of the review of the roles of the agencies involved in dealing with food imports was published (paragraph 30).

    (q)  We are concerned that despite well-placed, intelligence-based suspicion, operations to check flights are often only mounted when a team can be put together through the efforts of one official from the port health authority. There is clearly a need for much higher level co-ordination of such activity, since it appears that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is not currently fulfilling its 'overarching role' in this area. Operations against particular flights would also benefit from agreed commitments, from all the agencies involved, to the amount of time they are able to devote to operations against illegal meat imports. We acknowledge that there may be times when HM Customs and Excise officers, in particular, would be diverted to more critical work but feel that the higher-level co-ordination we propose would be better able to take account of such problems. Moreover, although we acknowledge that other agencies, including the Food Standards Agency, feel that they should become responsible for these matters, we are inclined to believe that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should be the lead body in dealing with illegal imports of meat and other foods (paragraph 31).

    (r)  We accept that resources currently allocated to dealing with the problem of illegal meat imports are not adequate, and are not secure at port level. We recommend that, once the risk assessment and the review of the roles of the agencies involved in dealing with illegal food imports have been completed, the Government provide adequate funds to meet their recommendations, and consider how they can be secured to the functions required (paragraph 35).

    (s)  We are concerned about the long delay between the problem being acknowledged by Government - action was being considered in March 2001 - and substantive action being taken a year later (paragraph 37).

    (t)  Since the Action Plan was published we have generally been impressed with the speed with which the Government and stakeholders have acted to address the various elements of the Plan. We hope that the publication of the risk assessment in September will provide another stimulus to take the Plan further forward with urgency (paragraph 38).

     
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