David Miliband today defended the decision to allow imports of turkey meat from Hungary to continue, even after an outbreak of bird flu was confirmed in the UK.

The Environment Secretary said that blocking imports would have breached European Union rules and invited Continent-wide retaliation against the British poultry industry, he said.

The Sunday Times reported today that the Government allowed Bernard Matthews to continue importing turkey meat from a bird flu-hit region of Hungary even though it suspected the area was the source of the British outbreak.

A consignment of 20 tons of turkey was imported last Tuesday from a slaughterhouse in Hungary, three days after avian flu was confirmed at the Bernard Matthews plant in Suffolk.

Government inspectors knew in advance that Bernard Matthews intended to import the meat from a slaughterhouse only 30 miles away from the Hungarian outbreak – but did nothing to stop it.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) admitted on Saturday that it had the power to block such meat imports but had decided not to do so.

Ben Bradshaw, the agriculture minister, also blamed the failure to act on fears of retaliatory action against British exports by other European Union states. “There was a fear that if we were to ban imports from Hungary, other countries could treat British exports in the same way,” he said.

It meant that meat potentially carrying the flu virus was carried straight through protective cordons set up around the Suffolk plant to prevent the spread of avian flu.

The Hungarian meat was then processed at the plant in Holton, where a near-identical strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus had led to the cull of nearly 160,000 turkeys.

Investigators from the Food Standards Agency were this weekend checking to see if any of the processed imported meat had been distributed to shops. The investigation could lead to a mass recall of Bernard Matthews products.

The revelation will intensify criticism of the way the government and Bernard Matthews have handled the outbreak. Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, accused the Government of “extraordinary complacency”.

“It beggars belief that the government could have been so casual about the virus being brought in on imported meat,” he said. “Anyone with common sense could see it was highly unlikely that wild birds were the cause because there was no concrete evidence.”

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