Can I bring in food products (cheese) to UK from another country?
 

I want to bring some tasty cheese(3 pounds or so) from the USA to a friend in London for her birthday. Is it allowed to bring a food product like that into the country?? Will I have to declare it??? Will they just toss it in the trash? I'll be coming in in June, have been to London twice but never declared any agricultural products or anything. Not sure how this all works.

My friend loves cheese, she told me to bring her some from here where we are known for our dairy products. She's also pretty broke. Weird request, I know.

As far as I know you are not allowed to bring dairy products into the UK, the same goes for meat.
If you bring it and a customer officer stops you at the airport and finds it, they will take it and there might be a penalty as well.

First, customs restrictions are nowhere near as draconian as when entering the US, so please don't worry! Second, customs regulations are generally EU-wide as we have free movement within most EU countries.

I understand that informally, if cheese or meat products are in hermetically sealed packages, they are tolerated. However, read this notice for the official view:

http://www.food.gov.uk/enforcement/i...dairy_products

I guess it's probably not worth the bother, just in case you suffer a rare spot check. Good luck anyway.

Yes, it would be sealed, in little half pound packages. Doesn't look too promising, I'll look closer at that link. I was going to do this thru a retail outfit over Christmas, but it was exorbitantly expensive. Like 25GBP to send a pound or two of cheese from here.

USDA isn't that bad. I bought dutch cheese through SEA to bring back to Canada. Though they weren't hermetically sealed, they were declared and inspected and I was free to lug them home.

I've generally had no trouble with getting cheese into the US, even the stuff that isn't hermetically sealed. At ORD I had one customs agent scribble in marker over my customs card that I'd marked to indicate I had dairy goods and told me "Tell them Dave says the cheese is okay" and told me to go. SEA only really gets hardcore about fruit and I've seen the sniffer dogs all over some guys handluggage because he had an apple in his bag to eat during the flight that he'd forgotten.