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An inspection of
border security at Manchester Airport in northern England found
that during a seven-month period, the six dogs had failed to
find any illegal class A drugs, those considered the most
dangerous such as heroin or cocaine.
"The deterrent effect of the detection dogs was difficult to
measure, but seizures alone represented a low return on
investment, given 1.25 million spent on new kennels and the
costs of operating the unit," said the report by the Independent
Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.
Each dog has its own speciality in detecting goods such as
drugs, tobacco, cash and meat being illegally brought into the
airport by the 22 million passengers who use it annually.
However the report found that although the sniffers had helped
customs seize 46 kg of cigarettes and 181 kg of meat, they had
uncovered no class A drugs between November 2014 and June 2015
even though this was a "very high" priority.
It said one dog trained to find smuggled animal products had
made "multiple accurate detections, but most were of small
amounts of cheese or sausages, wrongly brought back by returning
British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to UK public
health".
Managers are now examining how better to deploy the dogs, the
report said.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)
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