LONDON — The U.K. has moved to ban meat and dairy imports from Hungary and Slovakia after a case of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed along the border between the two countries on Friday, less than two months after an outbreak in Germany.
The ban covers “cattle, pigs, sheep, goats and other non-domestic ruminants and porcines such as deer and their untreated products, such as fresh meat and dairy,” the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement late Friday.
In addition, as of Sunday, travellers will no longer be able to bring meat, meat products, milk and dairy products, and animal by-products of pigs and ruminants from Hungary and Slovakia into Britain, the department said.
“The government will do whatever it takes to protect our nation’s farmers from the risk posed by foot-and-mouth disease,” U.K. Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner said in the statement. “We will not hesitate to add additional countries to the list if the disease spreads.”
Hungarian authorities detected a case of the highly contagious disease at a 1,400-strong cattle farm on the border with Slovakia, in the country’s first outbreak in 50 years, its National Food Chain Safety Office (Nabih) reported.
The U.K. has already banned the import of cattle, pigs and sheep from Germany — including meat and dairy products — following an outbreak in that country in January. Britain has also banned individuals traveling to the U.K. from importing these products. It is unclear if the cases are connected.
Tom Haynes, a senior policy adviser at the National Pig Association (NPA), the U.K.’s trade body for the pig industry, said the latest case in Hungary “further reinforces the need for a wholesale review of our biosecurity and border measures to ensure they are able to protect British producers.”
“It is vital that, in addition to new control measures, the government introduces a zero-tolerance policy for the personal import of pig meat and provides sufficient funding to those agencies on the front line to ensure it can be enforced,” he added. “The 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak cost the U.K. £14.7 billion in today’s prices.”
Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious viral disease of cattle, sheep, pigs and other cloven-hoofed animals, with symptoms including lameness and blister-like sores on the feet, mouth and tongue.
The U.K. farming industry was devastated by an outbreak of the disease in 2001, with more than 2,000 farms affected and more than 6 million animals slaughtered.
The reports from Hungary follow claims last month that banned German products were being “auto-cleared” to enter the U.K. six days after the ban was put in place, with experts blaming the incident on a failure to update the government’s import notification system, known as IPAFFs.
Giving evidence to the environment, food and rural affairs committee earlier this week, NPA CEO Lizzie Wilson claimed illegal German products were still bypassing the border. Currently, she explained, there is “no mechanism to identify those lorries that have self-declared themselves as low-risk and therefore auto-cleared so they don’t have to be inspected.”
A spokesperson from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has denied the claims. “Restrictions were immediately brought in on animal products from Germany to prevent an outbreak,” they said. “These goods are not permitted to enter the country, any consignment carrying them will not progress through our clearance system and will be stopped at the border.”
According to the latest data from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), the U.K. imported 1,823 tons of fresh and frozen pork, 48 tons of bacon, 722 tons of sausages and 264 tons of processed ham and pork from Hungary in 2024.
That year, the U.K. also imported nine tons of frozen beef, six tons of processed beef and seven tons of beef offal. In terms of dairy products, it imported 1,578 tons of cheese and curd, 13 tons of powdered and condensed milk, 203 tons of whey and whey products and one ton of yoghurt and buttermilk.
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