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Lorries arriving at Dover with potentially unsafe meat imports are not showing up for checks, the government has acknowledged, highlighting a major flaw in the UK’s post-Brexit border regime.
Some 18 per cent of all consignments selected for inspection in November last year were classified as “drive-bys”, meaning they were not checked, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Lorry drivers transporting consignments of meat and other animal products flagged for inspection are supposed to travel 22 miles from Dover, the UK’s busiest port, to “self declare” at Sevington, a government-run border control post near Ashford.
But almost one-fifth were “flouting this requirement” and continuing to their destination with little risk of repercussions, the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee said on Wednesday.
“This new evidence from Defra paints a picture of a dysfunctional system,” said Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat chair of the committee. “Unchecked meat and plant products carrying potentially devastating diseases are being let in through the front door.”
At an Efra evidence session on Tuesday, officials from the environment department stressed that they carried out “follow up” checks on drive-by consignments but could not say how often or how they enforced the regime for lack of sufficient data.
The Sevington border control post was built in 2021 to accommodate the flood of lorries expected in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Run at a cost of £23mn in the year to April 2025, it handles the majority of checks on plant and animal goods such as dairy products and meat arriving in Britain.
The FT reported last year that the government was trying to sell the 1,300-truck facility as talks over a “veterinary agreement” with Brussels, as part of a wider reset of UK-EU relations, could render it redundant.
When the post-Brexit border regime took effect in 2024, customs agents and the food industry said it was inadequate and warned that goods were being cleared through Sevington without checks.
Food industry groups have warned repeatedly that the system is ripe for abuse, pointing out that the 22-mile drive between Dover port and Sevington gave drivers plenty of scope to avoid the inspection process.
The figures on attendance shared with the Commons committee by the environment department covered only three months — November 2024, August 2025 and November 2025.
Emma Bourne, Defra’s director-general for EU reset and trade, said during the committee session on Tuesday that this was because of inconsistencies and gaps in the data, which was held across different authorities and datasets. The department was trying to bring together those datasets to improve enforcement, she added.
The environment department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
