When we’re in an exotic location, it can be fun to scour interesting markets and unusual shops for unique gourmet items that could transform your dinner at home, or make a fantastic and unusual gift for a friend.

In reality bringing illegal foods into the UK from outside of the EU, such as meat or dairy products, can increase the risk of diseases like Foot and Mouth Disease and Bird Flu entering the UK – putting people, animals and agriculture at risk. However many Brits are completely unaware that restrictions exist on food items.

Every year Border Force Officers seize and destroy an estimated 85 tonnes of food from long-haul holidaymakers, many of whom are confused about the differences in the personal import rules from outside and inside the European Union (EU). Food products seized include meat and dairy products, fish including shellfish, and honey.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is urging British holidaymakers jetting beyond the EU this half-term to think twice about the food items they bring back to the UK. The ‘Don’t bring it back campaign!’ is asking people to check the rules online before they go to avoid breaking the law and facing the embarrassment of having bags searched on the return to the UK.

Log onto our live and interactive WebTV show to find out exactly what you can and can’t bring back from countries outside of the EU. On hand to answer your questions will be travel expert Simon Calder and Chris Pratt, a UK Border Force officer.

H: Jayne Constantinis, host
S: Simon Calder, travel expert
C: Chris Pratt, UK Border Force officer.

H: Hello and welcome to the Travel Show, brought to you today by The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs I’m Jayne Constantinis. Now then every year Britain’s border force officers seize and destroy an estimated 85 tonnes of food from long-haul holidaymakers, many of them are oblivious to the personal import rules when it comes to bringing food from outside of the EU back into Britain. The potential risks of doing so are severe and could have a devastating impact on humans, animals and agriculture. Well joining me to talk about this today is UK Border Force officer Chris Pratt and travel expert Simon Calder. Welcome to the show gentlemen. Simon, it is true isn’t it that a lot of people are simply unaware of the rules. There’s been some research recently hasn’t there?

S: Yes and I think your word “oblivious” is just about right. DEFRA has just done some research which showed that one in five of people heading abroad simply were unaware that there were any rules at all on what you can bring back in terms of food, from outside the EU. And even the people who did know, 1 in 3 of those thought well it’s probably actually unnecessary red tape, we don’t need these rules, and I can kind of sympathise with where they get that idea because clearly we need to keep things like weapons and pornography and drugs out of the country, and you might think well cheese and potatoes, they’re hardly offensive items are they? Well unfortunately as you suggested, if you are talking about the possible damage to agriculture, yes they can be a very serious threat indeed, which is why you’ve got these rules that as you suggest, relatively few people are confident that they know

H: Well Chris I count myself among the number that don’t know the rules. You presumably do so can you elaborate for us on exactly what the regulations are?

C: Yes in relation to countries outside of the EU there is an absolute ban and prohibition on importation of meat and dairy products. There are restrictions on fruit and vegetables and other products such as fish and fish products

H: And is this just about disease? What’s it all for?

C: It’s primarily about disease and issues surrounding public health in the United Kingdom. Rural health, animals, farming communities. The problem is with the products that you can get outside of the EU, is that we don’t’ know whether those goods are diseased and if you bring them in they can give you an illness, when they’re discarded, the remains are discarded, at rubbish tips, get into the food chain, that can be harmful to animal and the farming community as a whole. In 2001 we had Foot and Mouth outbreak and it’s thought that it was po9ssible that it was a result of a piece of imported meat htat was discarded. So there are some very real dangers and we know from 2001 I think we can certainly remember, and I think the farming community at large can still remember the catastrophic effect that it had, and of course it cost the tax man – payer – an awful lot of money. With compensation to farmers for livestock, and the tourist-related industries, because people couldn’t come and visit the country because basically whole sways of the English countryside were closed

H: Gosh it’s hard to think isn’t of all that devastation, those terrible, terrible scenes that we saw on the telly, all caused by a piece of meat, brought possibly in all innocence

C: Absolutely

H: What are the penalties should we transgress?

S: Well it’s really interesting the chances of being caught, and a lot of people would think oh well I’ll just pack a few odd snacks here, and we’ve actually got some – the sorts of things that people might want to bring back – these delicious beef patties from the Caribbean – all very nice, you can get them in Britain perfectly legally, things like these curious milk drinks that actually the Australians are quite keen on drinking for reasons known best to them, but this contains dried milk and therefore that’s illegal. And even halloumi, one of my favourites, fantastic to bring it back from somewhere like Cyprus or Greece in the EU but if it’s in Turkey or Egypt then that’s banned as well. Now would you believe when you come back into this country you’ve got the – sometimes you come in, you’re in the customs hall and you see these dogs running around and you think oh well they’re obviously trying to find drugs – no, they may well be special, dedicated hounds seeking out food if I’m not wrong Chris

C: That’s correct yes, absolutely yes. We have specialist dogs that are for all commodities, drugs, cash, but we have dedicated POAO dogs, that’s Product of Animal Origin, they – they will not sniff out infected meat or non-infected meat, what they will do is they will just sniff out food and it’s up to the customs officer to examine the luggage

H: I bet they’re the easiest ones to train aren’t they? Dogs that sniff out food.

C: That’s right but I think going on from what Simon said is that you bring the product back and the penalties, the first penalty you pay is that if there’s suspicions that you have illegal food in your luggage you are going to be delayed, and that’s the last thing you want after a long haul flight, 15 hours, waiting for your luggage. You’re going to be delayed. If the products are found, they’re going to be seized and also of course you’ve lost your money. You may have paid £5, 10, 15, 20 in equivalent currency for these goods and you’ve lost your money. And of course ultimately you could end up in court and be prosecuted, so my advice would be just don’t bring it, don’t bring it back

H: Yes. And tell me something – where can you got to find out what’s banned? I confess that I wouldn’t have thought in a million years that powdered milk would be a prohibited substance

S: Ok well it’s almost a two stage thing. First of all if you are taking a holiday outside the EU, then you just need to think hang on, if I’m bringing back anything of animal origin, that is probably not going to be allowed, but there’s a very straightforward way of doing it – you just go to a website which is direct.gov.uk/dontbringmeback and then you select your destination from a drop down list, all very easy, and it will say yes you can bring back, for example, some vegetable derived spread from Australia but you can’t bring back anything made with skimmed milk. So very straightforward and you can print that out of course before you go just to be absolutely sure. But I must say these days when airlines are shrinking the baggage allowance, I just find it’s much easier to come back with just photographs and memories really, and whatever you need, if it’s from abroad, we’re lucky enough to be living in a very diverse culture where you can probably pick it up in your local high street these days

H: Emma’s raised a very interesting point, “is it ok to bring back dead animals – whole animals – like scorpions encased in glass?” Now this is more familiar territory to me, this is more kind of potentially endangered species that you might be sold on a – you know a street market or whatever. What are the rules there?

S: There is obviously a completely separate and parallel convention on the international trade in endangered species, and customs officials are very, very assiduous at making sure that those rules are adhered to, and they’re taken very seriously. Something like a scorpion in a piece of glass, I would guess, it obviously depends on the exact case, that the scorpion is unlikely to be an endangered species, and if it’s encases in glass then probably it’s safe to bring back. Why you would want to do so is quite beyond me but there we are

C: That sort of thing would be ok. What we do find is a lot of people coming from China, China and associated countries, they bring back endangered species as herbal medicines, seahorses and seahorses are very much on the endangered species and if they are detected they will be automatically seized

H: What about – this is a question from Phil – “can I bring back food from outside of Europe if it’s tinned?” so does the packaging that it’s contained in have any kind of impact?

C: No absolutely not, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in tins or whether it’s vacuum packed, you just can’t bring it in, so whether it’s cooked, uncooked, whatever state it’s in, you can’t bring it back, and the interesting thing is being a multi-cultural society now that we are, the sort of things that we see on a day-to-day basis you can get exactly the same in the high street supermarkets

S: I was intrigued though when I was doing some research on this, there was one chap who came back from Ukraine, not known, it must be said for it’s great culinary delicacies,

H: Oh you’ll be getting hate mail now for that

S:Well no – lovely place, fascinating country but a guy had actually gone to the trouble of sewing into his jacket, 10kg of Ukrainian salami. Now I’m not sure, I’ve not seen any Ukranian salami on sale in the UK but that is going a bit far, and I suppose he may have taken a view well it’s processed food so therefore it’s safe, well as Chris says it most certainly isn’t

H: How many kilos?

S: 10kg so you’d look quite obvious I should think

H: He must have looked like the Michelin man mustn’t he?

C: Absolutely that’s exactly how he did look

H: What are some of the most outlandish, crazy things – in fact Ant has also asked this, what are the craziest things that people have tried to bring in? Apart from the 10 kgs of salami

C: Well funnily enough we don’t see that many crazy things. Most of the stuff that we see is just ordinary, you know the things that you see on the table here. You see the – you know the patties from the Caribbean and the halloumi cheese from Turkey. We do occasionally get the odd – odd item. I’ve seen skinned and unskinned whole rabbits in suitcases, I’ve also seen tortoises with or without shells. Dead but uncooked. Just raw. So we do get the occasional piece of food like that, but in the main it’s – it looks perfectly healthy but there’s a very high risk that from outside the EU it’s got disease

H: Just help me to understand the dried milk, because even if that had a disease, I’m at a loss to understand how the disease could still survive if this has been dried – freeze dried or whatever

C: Well this has been decided by vets and the health authorities that even though the powder is dried it still can present a danger to the public

H: Sometimes, I’m thinking of when you’re at places by the seaside and there are shell products on sale, or sometimes nuts that have been made into jewellery and so on – should we even be a little bit wary of products like that? Souvenirs that have been made out of animal products?

S: Within the context of food of animal origin I don’t think you need to be – again that goes back to CITES – the Convention on the International Trading of Endangered Species and the prospect of whether anything you might be bringing back offends that treaty, but no I mean people would I think specifically know if they are buying something because it is intended to be eaten, then that’s where they really need to be wary of breaking these rules that DEFRA found are causing – well they’re still quite a lot of misunderstanding about what they are

H: So how many – what sort of numbers are we talking about? We heard what the figure in weight is of confiscated goods – you know on an average, I don’t know plane of 500 people, how many will have inadvertently brought something back?

C: It depends on where the aircraft is coming from, and which country, but if I can give an example – I manage a team of 8 officers at Heathrow airport, and we concentrate on illegal food products being imported in the country and in a month, the 8 officers will make anything up to 400 detections and seizes totalling between 1 ½ and 2 tonnes of illegal food products, and that’s just out of passengers suitcases, and then there are many more customs officers all round the country that are engaging finding this sort of stuff, and that all adds up to 85 tonnes last year

H: That is a big problem. I had no idea that it was so widespread

S: Yes back of a boarding pass calculation suggests that’s 2 or 3 findings a day that you’re making, every day at the office. My goodness me

C: That’s right my team can have anything between 25-45 seizures in a shift

H: And what happens to all of the stuff that’s seized?

C: It obviously has to be disposed of very carefully because of the potential health hazard, it’s immediately put in a freezer and then a contractor turns up on a daily basis, takes it away and it’s incinerated. Obviously you can’t put these sorts of items in the ground because the disease could spread

H: Yes. Fascinating. I’m afraid we’re out of time – we could go on and on but thank you very much for coming in to talk, really interesting subject. And of course if you’d like to find out more, maybe print off the list for the country that you’re going to visit, so to be sure that you don’t bring something inadvertently back, then go to the website which is direct.gov.uk/dontbringmeback. Thank you for watching, see you again. Bye bye