Fresh food imports to the UK are coming under threat because illegal immigrants are hiding in the back of lorries; entire truck-loads of imported fruit and vegetables are being destroyed if a migrant is found inside a transportation vehicle. This could lead to a supplies shortage.
Home Secretary Theresa May has agreed to an urgent meeting with the ‘increasingly worried’ food industry to try to find ways of better protecting imported food from stowaways.
It is understood that, over the Christmas period, large quantities of imported vegetables destined for supermarkets and other retailers had to be ‘condemned’ for this reason. Many migrants clamber aboard freight lorries as they are being loaded –sometimes as far away as Spain – while others sneak aboard later in a journey.
But once an illegal immigrant is detected, either at the port of Calais or in the UK, the cargo is deemed ‘contaminated’, no longer considered fit for human consumption and destroyed.