A vet working at a British port health authority \u2014 granted anonymity to speak freely \u2014 said there was already evidence of criminals taking advantage of the ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, I\u2019ve seen firsthand how this is already being exploited,\u201d they said. \u201cFor example, in Facebook groups, the situation is escalating. A colleague from an EU country informed me that some companies are openly advertising to clients that they are still importing dairy and meat products, telling them \u2018not to worry.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey even invite people to contact them directly. So, in my opinion, this change may actually result in more illegal imports than before \u2014 unless there is proper enforcement at the border. However, now Defra has a convenient excuse \u2014 they can say: \u2018We have done our part by setting the policy; it\u2019s up to the enforcement authorities to implement it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There are also concerns about the way the ban was communicated to authorities. According to Buckingham, the announcement of the new rules \u201ccame as a shock to Dover Port Health Authority, which was given no advanced warning or time to prepare\u201d and heard about the ban at the same time as the general media release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is appalling practice,\u201d she said. \u201cDover is single-handedly holding disease threats from illegal personal imports at bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
For its part, the government said it was working closely with Border Force, Port Health Authorities and airlines to make passengers aware of the new rules, in addition to the roll out of digital and social media content.<\/p>\n
But for those on the frontline, the risk of not taking further action is too great to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost of foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever arriving here in Great Britain will run into millions, if not billions,\u201d Buckingham said. \u201cThe water around our island does not protect us, when illegal goods are simply driven over in cars and lorries stuffed onto a ferry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A vet working at a British port health authority \u2014 granted anonymity to speak freely \u2014 said there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[18991,7907,768,346,2437,7478,2438,3677,7964,728,2000,299,5187,6644,7908,1824,2190,475,1197,7911,2452,391,5111,46,7697,2444,811,2558,182,7912,2004,15,6507],"class_list":{"0":"post-32590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-airlines","9":"tag-austria","10":"tag-borders","11":"tag-cars","12":"tag-companies","13":"tag-dairy","14":"tag-department","15":"tag-digital","16":"tag-enforcement","17":"tag-environment","18":"tag-eu","19":"tag-europe","20":"tag-european","21":"tag-farmers","22":"tag-food-security","23":"tag-germany","24":"tag-hungary","25":"tag-imports","26":"tag-investment","27":"tag-meat","28":"tag-media","29":"tag-opinion","30":"tag-parliament","31":"tag-policy","32":"tag-ports","33":"tag-regulatory","34":"tag-security","35":"tag-slovakia","36":"tag-social-media","37":"tag-tom-bradshaw","38":"tag-tunnels","39":"tag-united-kingdom","40":"tag-water"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114363952251333439","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}