Committee publication · Correspondence · 21 October 2025
Correspondence from the Freight Liaison Group in response to the recently published reports into illegal meat imports and UK border resilience, dated 15 September 2025
From: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Animal and plant health
Summary
The Freight Liaison Group writes to EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael requesting inclusion in the proposed taskforce on illegal meat imports. FLG, representing customs agents and logistics operators at Dover and the Channel Tunnel, argues their decades of expertise and advance access to consignment data make them essential to implementing the committee's biosecurity recommendations. They also challenge the government's decision to site the primary border control post at Sevington rather than Bastion Point.
Key findings
- FLG requests representation on the illegal imports taskforce from November 2025, citing their possession of advance consignment data, decades of short straits expertise, and relationships with 29 border agencies.
- Driver notification system for border checks has failed; officials resorted to auto-clearing consignments (TODCOF) when IPAFFs-CDS IT systems could not deliver reliable notification to trucks entering via short straits.
- Sevington Border Control Post lacks enforcement mechanisms to ensure trucks with restricted products return for re-export and is poorly equipped for required interventions; Bastion Point, FLG argues, is better positioned and already EU-agreed as a potential SPS zone.
- FLG has repeatedly raised concerns since 2023 that the Border Target Operating Model increases burdens on compliant food importers without adequately controlling illegal meat imports.
- FLG identifies a 'perverse' situation: the BTOM creates commercial burdens on legitimate traders while illegal imports of meat and products of animal origin remain largely unchecked.
Tone
ProceduralTopics
Key actors
Freight Liaison Group (FLG), Alistair Carmichael, Heather Jones, Richard Catt, Mark Johnson, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Border Force, Food Standards Agency
Notable line
“… the situation is now perverse and at a tipping point. We applaud the EFRA Committee for the excellence and professionalism shown during the various sessions and the robust …”
Key Quotes
“Our ask is that the FLG be considered to join the taskforce from the outset – in order to bring an industry perspective to the discussions, both as critical friends and to add value from our decades of knowledge and expertise at the short straits.”
“Many of the "personal imports" of larger quantities of meat and products of animal origin are commercial movements anyway, some even entering the UK via the freight routes.”
“The previous government have failed to execute a reliable working model for driver notification, evidenced by the fact that officials had to resort to the Timed-Out Delivery Consignment Feature (TODCOF) which auto clears consignments because the link between the IPAFFs – CDS IT systems failed to deliver a workable notification system”
“In our view, the government decision to site the government-run BCP for the short straits as a sole site at Sevington was the wrong one.”
“We feel so strongly that this presents the last opportunity for the government to address and correct the fundamental failings of the BTOM, the broken border at the short straits, including the inefficiencies of the Sevington BCP”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗