LONDON — Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horsemeat scandal of 2013, a group of influential MPs warned as they dismissed a recent personal import ban on EU meat and cheese as “toothless.” The government moved in April to prohibit travelers from EU countries from bringing meat and dairy products into the U.K. following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease across the continent. However, as reported by POLITICO, the ban has not been fully enforced, with experts warning that U.K. health officials lack the funds to uphold the rules. In a damning report on Monday, the parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee warned that “alarming amounts” of meat and dairy products were still being illegally imported for both personal consumption and sale. The committee welcomed the government’s ban on personal imports of meat and dairy from the EU but described it as “toothless,” with prohibited products continuing to enter the U.K. through airports, seaports and the Eurotunnel in freight, parcels, personal baggage and passenger vehicles. “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horse meat scandal,” committee chair Alistair Carmichael said. “A still bigger concern is the very real risk of a major animal disease outbreak. The single case of foot-and-mouth disease in Germany this year, most likely caused by illegally imported meat, cost its economy one billion euros.” He urged the government to “get a grip on what has become a crisis” by establishing a national taskforce, boosting food crime intelligence networks, enforcing “real deterrents,” and giving port health and local authorities the resources and powers they need.   During the committee’s nine-month inquiry into animal and plant health, experts painted a gruesome picture of the situation at the border, describing cases of meat arriving in unsanitary conditions, often in the back of vans, stashed in plastic bags, suitcases and cardboard boxes. At the Port of Dover alone, port health officials say they intercepted 70 tons of illegal meat imports from vehicles between January and the end of April, compared with 24 tons during the same period in 2024. During a Public Accounts Committee session on animal disease last week, Emma Miles, director general for food, biosecurity and trade at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said it was unclear whether the increase in the number of seizures of illegal meat at Dover was due to a rise in crime or to better surveillance. “When you’re catching people it might just mean you are doing better surveillance and enforcement,” she said.

A new study published Thursday warns that tiger mosquitoes are increasingly spreading to Europe because of climate change, raising the risk that tropical diseases such as dengue and chikungunya become endemic across the continent. Nearly half the global population is now at risk of contracting dengue and chikungunya, which were once limited to the tropics, due to the warming planet. Both viruses, transmitted by mosquitoes, can occasionally be fatal. The symptoms include a high fever, headache, body aches, nausea and rash. The tiger mosquito, in particular, is venturing further north as global temperatures rise due to man-made climate change. The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, examined how climate and other factors have influenced the spread of dengue and chikungunya in Europe over the past 35 years. It found that outbreaks have become more frequent and severe since 2010, in line with rising temperatures. “Our findings highlight that the EU is transitioning from sporadic outbreaks of Aedes-borne diseases towards an endemic state,” the study said. In 2024, the hottest year on record, a total of 304 dengue cases were reported in the EU — “a historic peak compared with the combined total of 275 cases in the previous 15 years,” the study said. Countries like Italy, Croatia, France and Spain have all experienced outbreaks, the study said, adding: “The trend suggests a progression from sporadic cases towards endemicity in these countries.”   In June last year, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control found there were 130 locally acquired cases of dengue in the EU/EEA in 2023, compared with just 71 in the 10-year period between 2010 and 2021. According to the study, under worst-case climate scenarios, the spread of dengue and chikungunya could increase to five times the current rate by 2060.

Hungary on Thursday confirmed a fifth outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) at a cattle farm in Rábapordány,  near the Slovak border, escalating concerns over the spread of the highly contagious livestock virus first detected in the country last month. The latest case, confirmed by laboratory tests Thursday afternoon, prompted authorities to place the facility — housing some 600 dairy cows — under immediate quarantine, Agriculture Minister István Nagy announced on social media. Veterinary teams have begun preparations to cull the entire herd in accordance with emergency containment protocols . The virus was previously confirmed at four farms in Győr-Moson-Sopron county — Kisbajcs, Levél, Darnózseli and Dunakiliti — where over 4,000 animals were culled . Neighboring Slovakia, which has also recorded six outbreaks since March, declared a state of emergency last month and continues to enforce strict border and transport restrictions. Authorities have now established a three-kilometer protection zone and a 10-km surveillance zone around the latest Hungarian site. Contact tracing and additional testing are underway. While FMD poses no threat to humans, it can devastate cattle, sheep and pig populations, with huge economic consequences. Government officials estimate the direct cost of Hungary’s outbreak, the first in 50 years, already runs into millions of euros, with additional losses from halted exports and long-term industry disruptions expected to drive that further. In Slovakia, similar outbreaks have already cost an estimated €8 million . Some Hungarian and Slovak officials have floated unsubstantiated theories suggesting the virus may have been deliberately introduced, though experts warn against speculation without evidence . The United Kingdom has banned personal imports of meat and dairy from the EU, citing the need to protect its farmers and food security from further spread . The European Commission is conducting genome sequencing to help trace the origin of the virus .

BRUSSELS — The price of eggs is under control in Europe — just as President Donald Trump’s administration steps up an international egg hunt to combat shortages amid record prices in the United States. Egg prices in the EU did increase over the past year, but at a slower rate than in years prior, the bloc’s stats agency Eurostat reported Thursday. Egg prices in March were, on average, 6.7 percent higher in the EU than last March — an acceleration from the two preceding months. But even with these increases, the price rises are still much slower than in 2022 and 2023. Still, the average figure masks huge national divergences — with egg prices up by 46 percent in Czechia in March from a year earlier, by 30 percent in Slovakia and by 26 percent in Hungary. Prices fell by 3.6 percent in the Netherlands, by 3.2 percent in Luxembourg and by 2 percent in Greece. The U.S., meanwhile, continues to grapple with a major outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, which has forced the culling of millions of laying hens. In March, U.S. egg prices climbed to an all-time high of $6.23 a dozen. Trump fumed on Thursday morning that, actually, egg prices were down (though data shows prices were at $4.90 a dozen in January before President Joe Biden left office), in a social media post complaining that the European Central Bank had found room to cut interest rates. Trump lamented that the U.S. Federal Reserve had not managed to similarly cut U.S. interest rates, even though he railed that “Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS.”

BRUSSELS — Hungary and Slovakia have both suggested that ongoing outbreaks of highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) could be linked to bioterrorism — without presenting any supporting scientific evidence. Hungarian authorities detected an FMD case in early March at a cattle farm on the border with Slovakia, in the country’s first outbreak in 50 years. Since then, animals at three more Hungarian farms and six Slovak farms have tested positive for the virus, prompting authorities to vaccinate the herds to reduce any further spread before emergency culling. Slovakia has declared a state of emergency, imposed border restrictions, and set up a surveillance center staffed by police, firefighters and the military from both the ground and air.  “According to my current knowledge, there is no evidence supporting this scenario,” said virologist Jiří Černý from the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague of the bioterror claims. “This does not mean we should ignore the possibility of alternative explanations, but rather that these should be carefully investigated, not assumed without evidence. It does not mean that a bioterrorist attack is a likely explanation,” he said. FMD is the most feared animal disease in the world. Highly contagious in ruminants like cows, pigs, sheep and goats, it rarely kills livestock but instead causes fever, loss of appetite, and blisters in the hooves and mouth that require the whole herd to be culled — and exclusion zones to be imposed to prevent its spread. The disease has the potential to devastate animal agriculture. An outbreak in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused an agricultural and tourism crisis costing more than €15 billion. Authorities slaughtered more than 6 million animals in efforts to eradicate the disease. Germany also reported an outbreak in January that has since been contained. Germany also reported an outbreak in January that has since been contained. | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images Černý added that the virus was likely transmitted by accident and should be treated as such until proven otherwise. “The virus can be carried on contaminated shoes, clothing, equipment, or even bird feathers from migratory species. Similar cases of unintentional introduction have been documented in the past,” he told POLITICO. ‘ENGINEERED ATTACK’ Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of Cabinet, Gergely Gulyás, last Thursday became the first official to suggest the outbreaks could be the result of a biological attack. “At this stage, we can say that it cannot be ruled out that the virus was not of natural origin, we may be dealing with an artificially engineered virus,” Gulyás said at a press briefing, adding that the suspicion was based on verbal information received from a foreign laboratory whose findings have not yet been proven. Gulyás insisted that experts investigate any possibility of an “engineered attack.” Slovak Agriculture Minister Richard Takáč jumped on that bandwagon on Friday when he said in a YouTube interview that Slovakia is considering a similar possibility. “There are various speculations, various questions that we here in Slovakia are asking ourselves. The same questions are being asked by the European Commission as well,” Takáč said. “I can confirm that in official documents following meetings at the European level, bioterrorism is mentioned as one of the possible scenarios. That someone may have brought the virus here with a certain intent. It is the subject of an ongoing investigation,” he said. The Commission declined to comment on Takáč’s claim, but said it is working to figure out where the virus came from. “We have no comment on this. The Commission is working closely with the member states to try to find the origin of the outbreak. Virus isolation and genome sequencing are ongoing at the EU reference laboratory and may help clarify the origin. We cannot speculate on either the timing or the outcome of that work,” a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO. A number of countries are taking precautionary measures, from neighboring Austria and the Czech Republic stepping up border checks, to the United Kingdom banning personal imports of meat and dairy products from the EU.

Hungarian authorities have detected a case of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) 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 (Nébih) reported on Friday. Nébih was informed of FMD symptoms at “the beginning of March” and immediately issued “extremely strict official measures,” including a ban on live animals and their meat, the agency said. “The liquidation of the herd and the detection of the source of the infection are in progress,” it added. FMD is the most feared animal disease in the world. Highly contagious in ruminants like cows, pigs, sheep and goats, it rarely kills livestock, but causes fever, loss of appetite, and blisters in the hooves and mouth that require the whole herd to be culled. Germany is recovering from its own FMD scare in January, when an outbreak in water buffalo triggered expensive emergency measures, costing up to €1 billion in lost exports and prompting bans in the U.K., Mexico, and South Korea. The German outbreak has been contained, but European authorities fear a repeat of a 2001 epidemic in the U.K., which cost the agricultural and tourism sectors over €15 billion and led to the slaughter of more than 6 million animals. Commission officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This story has been updated.

Bird flu poses an increasing pandemic threat as it becomes more adaptive, jumping to humans, pets and zoo animals, Europe’s disease and food agencies warned on Wednesday. They are urging countries to step up their surveillance and containment measures to prevent the virus from continuing to evolve and become more dangerous to people. “In 2024, avian influenza viruses expanded their reach, infecting previously unaffected species. Our work identifies key mutations linked to a potential spread to humans, requiring rapid detection and response,” Bernhard Url, acting executive director at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), said in a press release. Avian flu has been recorded at high levels among wild birds and farmed species such as chickens in recent years. The virus has also jumped to other species during this time including seals, and — notably in the United States — dairy cattle.  But to date, cases among humans have been low. The U.K. reported its first case of this winter on Monday, while there have been 67 cases in the United States and one death. The risk of infection for the general European population remains low, and low-to-moderate for people routinely exposed to potentially infected animals. But the situation would change if there was any “confirmed human-to-human transmission,” said Edoardo Colzani, head of respiratory viruses at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). And this risk is increasing. The ECDC and EFSA have identified 34 key genetic mutations that make the virus more likely to jump from animals to humans but also to replicate to allow human-to-human transmission. The fact that the virus now contains all these characteristics is a “sporadic event,” Alessandro Broglia, senior scientific officer at EFSA, told POLITICO. Out of 27,000 virus sequences assessed, 144 contained the characteristics needed to jump and spread among people. “Those were mainly isolated in Asia and Africa and never in Europe,” Broglia added.  However, viruses that had acquired characteristics for spillover to humans were not only the highly pathogenic viruses, but also low pathogenic viruses, “that do not cause very serious disease, but can circulate in the population and slowly can acquire these mutations,” Broglia explained.  This makes surveillance on low pathogenic viruses  “a cornerstone” to spot these mutations and characteristics that can lead to human adaptation, he said. TEST, TEST, TEST Adaptation of avian influenza viruses to mammals can happen through genetic mutations and also through the mixing of genetic material between viruses. The interaction between wildlife, poultry, livestock and people is a driver for spillover.  “Are we creating the condition for this happening? What kind of poultry breeding system are we implementing? Why so many outbreaks in poultry farms in certain areas? And why so many jumps in mammal species?” Broglia asked, urging countries to think about how human activities facilitate the spread of such viruses. The interaction between wildlife, poultry, livestock and people is a driver for spillover. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images There were close to 100 human infections last year, said Colzani at the ECDC. Those often happen in occupational settings, where humans are exposed to sick animals. Colzani told POLITICO it would be “good practice” to test people when animal outbreaks occur — even if a person exposed to sick animals doesn’t show any symptoms “to detect if there is any silent transmission.” To avoid “an extremely rare” case of human influenza mixing with avian influenza, Colzani recommends vaccinating occupational animal workers against human seasonal flu to help reduce this risk. Avian influenza is circulating globally and, while there is data from North America, Japan or South Korea, it’s missing in vast swathes of the world due to limited laboratory capability. “In the rest of Asia or the full African continent we know little if anything, and this is the problem,” Broglia said, “we have no clue what is happening there.” He stressed the need for capacity building in these areas outside of the EU. Additionally, he called for harmonizing genetic information and associated metadata, which is “crucial for prevention and preparedness,” Broglia said. 

As butter prices continue to surge across Europe, Czech politicians have decided to tackle the situation in the most effective way — by bickering on social media. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, ruling out any government intervention, blamed the high prices of butter on the market structure, with small number of firms controlling the prices — including Agrofert, which is linked to the opposition leader Andrej Babiš. “The market should sort it out. Unfortunately, the market is not there. The market is dominated by three powerful players, including Mr. Babiš’s Agrofert and his friends, and they are simply oligopolies,” Fiala said in an interview with Czech tabloid Blesk. Babiš, who is expected to return to power next year, hit out at the prime minister, calling him a “fool.” “The Prime Minister is again babbling and lying about the price of butter … If he looked up that 60 percent of butter is imported into the Czech Republic and the biggest domestic producer is Madeta, he wouldn’t look like a fool now,” Babiš wrote on X. Agrofert, he added, “has a market share of only 8 percent, so it cannot have any influence on the price of butter.” “Anti-Babišism is clouding your brain, Prime Minister,” wrote Babiš. Fiala then pushed back against Babiš in a post on X with proof from the Office for the Protection of Competition showing that Agrofert controls 10 to 25 percent of the milk market. According to the Office for the Protection of Competition, the Czech foodstuff market has “an oligopolistic character” It announced on Thursday it will investigate the high prices of butter. The latest data from Czech Statistical Office show that 1 kg of butter cost 275 Czech koruna (around €11) in October, an increase of 11 percent in comparison with September and 34 percent compared with last year. In Europe, a metric ton of butter reached a historic high of €8,150 per ton in September, and now costs €7,600. That is still more than the initial price shock that hit the continent when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Speaking of Russia, where massive spending on the war in Ukraine is causing the economy to overheat, butter prices are high as ever. So much that some supermarkets were forced to start selling butter in plastic boxes with magnetic locks, following a spate of thefts. The main reasons behind sky-rocketing prices of butter in Europe include outbreaks of bluetongue disease in cattle and sheep, along with widespread drought, causing the global milk supply to decline. In turn, demand has increased and is expected to surge even further as the year-end holiday season draws near.

Things are about to get spicy. Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi will face what’s predicted to be one of the most aggressive European commissioner hearings on Wednesday, defending his credentials to members of the European Parliament as the European Union’s prospective representative for health and animal welfare.  This isn’t his first rodeo. Having overseen the enlargement portfolio in Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s first term, he’ll be coming in well prepared for questioning. But given the criticism he faced during his previous tenure, he may not make the cut. We’ll be bringing you all the live action from 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 6.  Background reading:  — How the hearings work  — Who’s most likely to get the chop  P.S. If you want to follow more of the action from the hearings, our reporters will be bringing you blow-by-blow updates from all 26 commissioner interviews here.