Smuggled meat threatens UK with catastrophic viruses

Hard-pressed officials are unable to intercept illegal imports carrying deadly diseases

Thousands of tonnes of illegally imported meat are smuggled into Britain each year, risking outbreaks of deadly viruses such as ebola.

An Observer investigation has discovered the imports includes beef and pork from parts of Asia and Africa where foot and mouth disease is endemic, and illegal bushmeat such as monkey, elephant, anteater, antelope and rat. The food is sold - often openly - in shops and restaurants throughout Britain.

Illegally imported meat was thought to be responsible for the outbreak of swine fever last year, and last week the Government said it was responsible for the foot and mouth outbreak which is devastating the British farming industry and costing the country billions of pounds.

However, veterinary experts warned that the trade could cause several other serious outbreaks that not only affect farming, but could kill hundreds of people. The threats include not just food poisoning bugs such as salmonella and E.coli, but ebola and anthrax.

Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen University and a government adviser on food safety said: 'There's a risk of a major food poisoning outbreak if it's coming in uncontrolled.' Tony Little, vice-president of the British Veterinary Association, said: 'Meat from the Third World is something you have to think quite seriously about. If it's being sold in markets circumventing all regulations, that's extremely serious.'

Seizures of illegally imported meat are running at around 200 a month, and sometimes result from tip-offs from baggage handlers who see blood dripping from suitcases. On one flight alone from Nigeria last year, 2,500kg of illegal meat was confiscated.

The fact that meat is still coming in from countries with endemic foot and mouth disease is an embarrassment to the Government as it steps up its slaughter campaign to rid British farming of the economically disastrous virus. Our investigation has shown potentially infected meat has been smuggled into the country throughout the crisis.

Government scientists believe the virus originated in infected imported meat from a Chinese restaurant being fed to pigs in untreated swill. But an environmental health source at Felixstowe, Britain's largest container port, revealed that last week customs stopped a consignment of illegal beef and pork from China, which had at least 20 foot and mouth outbreaks last year. It contained 100 cartons of meat mixed in with cereals, noodles and other non-meat products. The importer claimed no knowledge of the meat, which will make prosecution virtually impossible.

Officials warn that cutbacks mean they are so short staffed they can check only a tiny proportion of imports. Customs officials are also not allowed to inspect many non-food containers or containers from other European Union countries, which could hide meat smuggled across other borders.

'We catch a fraction of what is coming in,' said Doug Bloomfield, assistant director of environmental services at Suffolk Coastal District Council, which is responsible for Felixstowe. 'You only have to look at the foot and mouth epidemic now to see what a dangerous situation it is.'

The meat is destined either for private family use - often by ethnic minorities keen to enjoy traditional delicacies - or the catering trade. The investigation showed that illegally imported meat was openly on sale in shops in Brixton market in London, where bush meat for sale included rat, bat and monkey. Enforcement is so weak that a shop in Old Kent Road in London had a sign out in the pavement boasting: 'We Sell Bush Meat'. Only when it was alerted to the problem on Friday did Lambeth Council inspect Brixton Market, and confiscate illegal meat. Supermarkets in London and China Town in Manchester were also openly selling illegal meat. Newport supermarket in Soho was selling illegally imported pork, undeterred by Westminster Council, while the Wing Fat supermarket in Manchester was selling dried pork and beef from China.

The most dangerous illegal import is monkey meat, which caused an ebola scare at Heathrow airport last year. Customs sources say that 15 carcases of dead monkeys were found on 29 November hidden in a cargo of fruit and vegetables, which also contained an anteater and tortoise legs. Environmental health officers realised the monkeys could be carrying ebola, one of the deadliest and most contagious viruses known to man that kills nearly all its victims.

The customs inspection post and any vehicle that had been near the cargo was sprayed with disinfectant. 'I had my own car sprayed and it was pretty scary. The word they kept mentioning was ebola,' said the source. The monkeys had originally come from a flight from Cameroon that touched down in Geneva and were then transferred on to a Swissair plane to London.

Prof Pennington said it is quite possible to catch ebola from monkey meat while it is being prepared. 'Before you cook it, you cut it up and there could be an aerosol spray of the virus, or you could get the blood on you,' he said.

Little added: 'It's the nightmare scenario if you brought ebola in from Africa.'

Another danger from illegal meats is the Nipah virus, which affects and kills both pigs and humans, who die in agony within 48 hours. The virus killed 100 people in Malaysia last year and wiped out the pig industry before it was controlled.

A new strain of salmonella specific to the Gambia has been found in the UK, suggesting illegal imports of meat from that country. E.coli 0157 was unknown in the UK until the mid-Eighties, and may have entered through illegal imports.

Dozens of other diseases including anthrax, sheep pox, pseudorabies, and African horse sickness could all be imported.

Illegal importers are making huge profits by taking advantage of weak border controls: Customs and environmental health officers have faced severe cuts since 1993 due to the single European market. In Dover, the number of health officers has fallen from seven to one in just eight years. At the airports, the picture is even more bleak. Cargo manifests often say just 'mixed goods' or 'fruit and vegetables' and there is no law making it mandatory for such consignments to be checked. Most containers go through customs electronically. It can take just a few hours for a container of dangerous meat to get on to Britain's roads.

'Most of the containers are put on lorries and gone before we even get out of the office,' said Rose Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the Association of Port Heath Authorities. 'Airports are a great backdoor to get illegal meat into this country.'

The worst culprits are believed to be the state airlines of Nigeria and Ghana. Last year, Customs and officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food carried out raids on 14 flights from Nigeria or Ghana looking for illegal meat.

They recovered five tons of meat products ranging from dried fish to anteaters to antelope - potentially carriers of foot and mouth.

Clive Lawrance, head of Ciel Logistics - which oversees imports at Heathrow - organised one of the raids, including one in September on a DC-10 flight from Accra, Ghana. As the luggage was offloaded Customs and Maff officials checked it.

A total of 56 bags contained meat weighing about 1,388 kilogrammes.

Much of the meat was rancid and some was spilling out of the suitcases. If any viruses had been present it would have been ideal circumstances for contamination.

Most of the tip-offs come to airport customs from baggage handlers who have spotted blood seeping out of baggage or can smell rotting meat. Despite their successes, however, the raids on planes were stopped in October. There was simply not enough staff to continue them and passengers had complained at having their luggage searched. Since then, the trade has continued. Last Monday, 12 suitcases of meat and two of live African snails were stopped on a Ghana Airways flight coming into Heathrow.

'Up to 10 tons of meat might be coming into Heathrow every day - there is practically nothing being done to stop it,' Lawrance said.

If a part of the airport becomes contaminated with any form of virus it could easily leap between continents in a matter of hours.

Lawrance was so worried about the extent of the problem at Heathrow that he wrote to Agriculture Minister Nick Brown last May and warned of the risks: he specifically mentioned foot and mouth as a potential disaster. His letter was ignored.

Port officials want greater power to check luggage, cargo and containers. They also want the use of X-ray machines to scan incoming goods. But even then it might be difficult to disrupt the trade with effective prosecutions: most importers or passengers claim ignorance of the regulations or insist they did not know the meat was in their consignment.

This has left much of the smuggling trade untouched. The meat trade to restaurants is sophisticated and can involve high profits. Most of it is run by people in Britain whose network of contacts and couriers stretches to African and Asian village markets. Customs sources believe officials in some Asian and African airlines are also involved in the trade.

Maff is meeting next week with the Association of Port Health Authorities, the Food Standards Agency and Customs and Excise to tackle the issue. The Agriculture Secretary, Nick Brown, hinted that airlines may be fined for carrying illegal meat.

However, a spokesman for the FSA played down the threat. 'We take this seriously, and we actively investigate such allegations. But so far, there is no significant history of health concerns from illegally imported meat,' he said.

But Mac Johnston, professor of Veterinary Public Health at the Royal Veterinary College, said the risks were not remote: 'Earlier this year, the risk of foot and mouth disease was remote, but now we have it. The foot and mouth outbreak has shown the scale of the illegal trade. We need to learn these lessons.'