Pesticides and English border controls

In early 2022, PAN UK received an anonymous email from an individual who indicated that their job gave them a close operational knowledge of the regulatory system for imports. The person stated that exceedances of Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) were being found on food imported to the UK. They claimed that those conducting the sampling were regularly instructed to release the consignments on to the UK market for consumers to purchase.

Following this tip off, PAN UK conducted an initial scoping project in 2022 to look more closely at the border arrangements for importing produce. Through a series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to the twelve biggest ports in England, we established that, on numerous occasions, produce with MRL exceedances was allowed to continue on to its destination within the UK. We also found that the border sampling regime suffered from both limited capacity and a severe lack of clarity.

In light of these initial concerns, we decided to look more thoroughly at the issue. In July 2023, we sent more than 80 FoI requests to bodies involved in the border regime, namely Port Health Authorities, Trading Standards, the Food Standards Agency and Health and Safety Executive. The responses revealed a range of issues which, together, call into question government claims that the UK’s borders are sufficiently robust to detect food contaminated with pesticides and prevent it from entering the market.

Responses to our second tranche of FoIs once again revealed instances in which food containing MRL exceedances managed to slip past England’s border controls. These findings are underpinned by the results of the UK government’s pesticide residue testing scheme. Despite only sampling food that has made it through UK borders and is therefore available to purchase by British consumers, the scheme’s results always include findings of MRL exceedances in food imports.

Our research also revealed major differences in effectiveness between the UK’s two border control regimes. Under the mandatory regime, foods identified as high risk are subject to compulsory checks. While our FoIs showed that 6% of all samples taken under the mandatory regime detected an MRL exceedance, we did not come across any instances of this contaminated food being allowed to enter the UK market. In fact, the mandatory regime appears to be robust and functioning well. However, its overall impact in terms of consumer protection is limited since it covers an extremely small selection of produce, just 57 country-product combinations (e.g. parsley from Vietnam) at time of writing. The UK imports far more types of produce from a much greater number of countries than are included in the mandatory sampling annexes. The list of food items under the mandatory regime is also insufficiently responsive or dynamic. In an ideal world, it would be updated regularly to reflect emerging threats and target the produce that other monitoring systems suggest are most likely to contain MRL exceedances. However, this does not appear to be the case.

In contrast to the mandatory regime, our FoIs revealed that the UK’s discretionary surveillance monitoring system, and wider import surveillance, are functioning extremely poorly.  We uncovered a patchy system with high rates of MRL exceedances. Of the results that were reported to us, the percentage of samples with an MRL exceedance was 12% (double that of the mandatory regime). However, there appeared to be far less sampling taking place than we expected. Only five of the 14 Port Health Authorities (PHAs) at Border Control Points (BCPs) responded with data related to surveillance sampling, with the remaining seven reporting that no surveillance sampling had taken place on fresh produce or cereals. We also uncovered a worrying lack of sampling in ports other than BCPs. Of the 49 PHAs (that were not at that time BCPs) which responded to our FoIs, 42 (86%) provided no data, stating that they did not have relevant imports through the ports in their jurisdictions. This absence of data indicates that PHAs which are not BCPs do not play much of a role in the pesticide sampling regime for food imports. Given how few imports are covered under the mandatory regime, this calls into question the ability of England’s borders to detect contaminated food.

A key reason for this low level of surveillance sampling appears to be a lack of funding. When a PHA undertakes sampling as part of the mandatory regime, it is able to recover the cost so there is no financial disincentive against sampling. In contrast, if produce is not part of the mandatory regime, then the PHA – which is either constituted as a local authority or sits under a local authority – has to conduct any surveillance sampling at its own expense. Given the relatively low number of samples that were reported, it seems clear that PHAs are struggling with competing priorities and operating with limited resources, resulting in low levels of pesticide residue sampling at the border outside of the mandatory regime. When we asked PHAs about the funding they were spending on pesticide residue sampling, not one of the 49 that responded reported spending its own funds on sampling of produce that is not included on the restricted imports list.

While it is to be expected that such a system would be complex, issues with the UK’s border system appear to suffer from a range of problems caused by inconsistency and confusion. Despite the importance that the border regime holds in terms of protecting public health, it is surprisingly difficult – and in some cases impossible – to find accurate information on some of its most crucial elements, including a definitive list of PHAs and BCPs in England.

Recent developments appear to have exacerbated the issues with the UK’s border controls. EU exit has led to delays and confusion at UK borders, frustrating food businesses.  New post-Brexit Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with major agricultural exporting countries with far weaker pesticide standards than the UK – such as Australia and India – place additional pressure on UK borders. As food imports from these countries increase, it only becomes more important to ensure that the UK border regime is sufficiently robust to detect contaminated food. When we raise these concerns with the UK government, the reply is always that UK borders will detect any food imports that do not meet domestic standards.  However, the evidence laid out in our report calls this into question.

Priority recommendations

(The full list of recommendations can be found in our report)

The UK government should take a range of urgent steps. Specifically:

• Conduct a review into the effectiveness of UK border controls and their capacity to identify food imports containing MRL exceedances and prevent them from reaching consumers.
• Amend the mandatory regime to cover a larger list of country-crop combinations and to be more responsive and dynamic to reflect emerging threats and target the produce that other monitoring systems suggest are most likely to contain MRL exceedances.
• For all FTAs signed by the UK since EU exit, conduct a detailed assessment of the risks posed to UK food safety with regards to pesticide residues on food imports and whether current import checks are sufficient to reduce the risk of contamination by pesticides. Where risks of contamination are identified, the government should flag the particular country/commodity combination for mandatory testing.
• Ensure that PHAs are funded adequately by central government to conduct surveillance sampling, removing the current financial disincentive.