This week’s BBC Radio 4 programme The Price of Meat should be required listening for anyone working in the UK meat and livestock industry. Presented by Charlotte Smith, the documentary investigates the growing illegal meat trade entering the UK, much of it originating in Romania, where African swine fever has been widespread for years.
The programme traces the complex routes this meat takes to reach Britain and speaks to customs and food standards officials to uncover the full scale of the problem. Dover Port Authority alone seized 20 tonnes of illegal meat in September 2025, compared with just 1.3 tonnes in September 2022. As the programme notes, “extrapolate the numbers with unchecked cargoes and the UK’s other ports and it’s clear that hundreds of tonnes of illegal meat are reaching our shores every month.”
This is not, as the programme makes clear, “just a tax issue with cheeky smugglers making a few quid,” but a serious biosecurity and economic threat, with some meat coming from areas affected by African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease. Professor Chris Elliott, who appears in the programme and has since written about it on LinkedIn, puts it bluntly: “When legitimate meat becomes more expensive, the opportunity for criminals increases and illegal meat doesn’t just undermine farmers, it creates real risks for animal health and public safety.”
Elliott warns that the core issue is not simply price, but “biosecurity, fraud and system vulnerability,” because illegally imported meat bypasses veterinary checks, traceability and disease controls, undermining confidence in the entire food system.
He describes the programme as “a very uncomfortable but very necessary exposé” and argues that if enforcement, border controls and intelligence-led surveillance do not keep pace with market pressures, “we create the perfect conditions for criminal exploitation.”
His conclusion is that Government must allocate far more resources to protect UK public health and national food security. The risks outlined in The Price of Meat aren’t theoretical, and nobody should be underestimating or ignoring them.
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We are further strengthened by our associate Members who work in industries that support and supply our meat processing companies.
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