Orwell’s newspeak: funding of Britain’s services is being controlled – not cut

On Radio 5 today PM Rishi Sunak spoke about controlling public services rather than cutting funds as recorded by many, including Dr Richard Hatcher’s entries on the BATC website, which list cuts for Birmingham’s libraries, housing, highways, homeless services, support for vulnerable adults, care for children and so on.

Funds for checking the safety of imported food are to be controlled, not cut (Newspeak).

The Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) has told the Financial Times that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) plans to cut (control) 70% of the DPHA’s funding to its inspection team from April, as new post-Brexit controls come into force. Dover Port inspectors warn that funding cuts pose a risk to British food safety and animal health (Financial Times).

Since the UK left the EU in 2020, the government has relied in large part on checks carried out on the continent to ensure goods coming into the country are compliant with EU standards.

About 40 DPHA inspectors work alongside the UK’s border force to identify potentially diseased, illegal and undeclared meat at Dover.

The inspection team at the DPHA, which is part of Dover District Council, was set up in 2022 to screen for pork contaminated with African Swine Fever.

Boar with African Swine Fever

The UK’s new “Border Target Operating Model” will involve the transfer of most health checks on food arriving at Dover and through the Channel Tunnel to a single border control post in Sevington, 22 miles inland.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Work is under way with the Food Standards Agency to ensure there are robust procedures in place for goods arriving at Sevington — an established border facility — to ensure there is absolutely no compromise on food safety or biosecurity.”

DPHA head Lucy Manzano said: “If [ASF] lands in the UK it will devastate our farming community, result in national culling programmes, reputational damage, export bans, and the list goes on.”

The UK’s National Pig Association (NPA) said that the volumes of illegal meat being seized were “deeply worrying” and that the cost of living crisis was contributing to a growing black market for meat in the UK.

“As we know from the regular emergence of ASF in new areas across Europe . . . it will only take one incident of a piece of infected meat reaching a pig to bring the entire pig industry to its knees,” said NPA chief executive Lizzie Wilson.

On Saturday morning, the team seized more than a tonne of pork from just three vehicles that was largely intended for commercial use and DPHA staff have seized more than 57 tonnes of illegal meat since the African Swine Fever checks were introduced in September 2022. The disease is currently spreading through herds in some European countries. 

 

 

 

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