Poland is one of the largest exporters of poultry meat to the UK. Image created with the help of AI (Reve)
Concerns are growing that Polish poultry farmers are sending chicken to the UK despite not operating with the necessary permits. The British Poultry Council said it wanted reassures that meat from Polish farms operating without a permit was not being sent to the UK.
It follows a study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that almost half of Poland’s 2,000 largest poultry farms were operating without the necessary environmental and pollution control permits.
A push for permits
Poland is one of the largest exporters of poultry meat to the UK and at the end of 2023, local authorities in the UK were urged to step up checks on Polish imports due to a rising threat from Salmonella, which affected hundreds of people across the country.
Now, Poland’s Chief Inspectorate for Environmental Protection has requested all regional inspectors to verify their records on the number of industrial poultry farms that require a particular permit.
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The checks are ongoing but what they have found so far is reportedly shocking. In Mazowieckie, the poultry-producing region at the heart of the Bureau’s investigation, 80% of the farms operating without a permit are big enough to require one.
Dr Milka Sokolović, director general of the European Public Health Alliance, a non-profit organisation, said that the findings were a “public health issue hiding in plain sight”.
“When farms escape the permitting and inspection systems, pollution, excessive antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance also escape detection – sometimes for years, until a child ends up in hospital or a community discovers that its water has been contaminated.”
A call for assurances
The ongoing investigation has prompted the British Poultry Council to call for assurances that meat from unlicensed Polish farms is not being imported into the UK.
Richard Griffiths, CE of the British Poultry Council said: “We do not want public trust in poultry meat eroded at a time when food security is a huge challenge, or UK production to be undermined by imports produced in systems that would not be allowed here.”
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The European Commission did not rule out the possibility of proceedings against Poland in response to the findings. “Member States must ensure that EU law is implemented, correctly and in a timely manner,” an European Commission spokesperson said, adding that the Commission “may launch infringement procedures when this is not the case”.
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