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In a radio interview last week, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP appeared to claim that “swans were being eaten in Royal Parks” and “carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten” by migrants.
There’s no evidence that swans have been eaten in Royal Parks by migrants, however, and the charity which manages them said in a statement that it hadn’t had any incidents reported of people killing or eating swans in the eight Royal Parks, all of which are in London.
Reports of swans being caught and eaten elsewhere have appeared in the media over the years, though in many the identity of those responsible was not verified.
Since Mr Farage made his claim, we’ve seen several related claims and images circulating on social media. Here we’ve looked at what we know about some of those claims, and what Mr Farage said.
What exactly did Mr Farage say?
Speaking on LBC, Mr Farage said to the presenter Nick Ferrari: “If I said to you that swans were being eaten in Royal Parks in this country, that carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country, by people who come from cultures that have a different… would you agree it was happening here?”
He went on to tell the presenter that “neither of us can prove or disprove this”, and then, asked who was doing this, added: “People who come from countries where it’s quite acceptable”. Asked about headlines saying that eastern European or Romanians were involved, Mr Farage said: “So I believe.”
We contacted Reform UK to ask about Mr Farage’s comments but did not receive a response.
What do we know about swans being eaten?
Claims of swans being killed and eaten are not new — we’ve found media reports dating back to 2003 about this, though in many the identity of those responsible was not confirmed, and we’ve seen no verified incidents matching Mr Farage’s specific claim.
In 2013 a national newspaper reported that police were investigating the remains of swans found by the Fossdyke canal in Lincolnshire. While one police officer did say it appeared the birds were being killed for food, he did not suggest that the incidents were linked to migrants.
A separate incident of a swan allegedly being killed and eaten was also reported that same year in Windsor, Berkshire. But again, we couldn’t find any reports linking this to migrants.
In 2012, an eyewitness claimed to have seen a man a London newspaper reported was “believed to be an East European immigrant” cooking what he believed to be a swan by the River Lea in east London. Similar claims were also made in the area in 2003, but at the time police said that while the possibility swans were being taken for food was a “strong line of enquiry”, they had no clear evidence to support claims that eastern Europeans or asylum seekers were responsible.
We’ve been unable to confirm with police whether anyone was ultimately identified in connection with these incidents.
We have also seen several articles about a 2014 case which reportedly involved a man originally from Turkey who admitted killing and eating a swan in Kent.
It’s worth noting that none of the above incidents took place in a Royal Park.
In the wake of Mr Farage’s comments we’ve also seen various claims shared online with images or videos, with some social media users suggesting they show migrants eating swans.
It’s impossible for us to verify what some of these images and videos show, or prove or disprove that they depict migrants eating swans, and the following list of incidents is not definitive. (None appear to be linked to Royal Parks, however.)
An image has been shared on Facebook alongside claims that migrants were seen attempting to catch a swan to eat at Winsford Marina in Cheshire. These claims, which seem to be based on images taken in November 2024, were rejected at the time by Cheshire Police. It said there was “absolutely no evidence that this is the case”, and that it believed the men pictured were instead trying to take a photo with the swan.
Several media outlets have linked Mr Farage’s claim to a video shared on social media earlier this year captioned “RSPCA worker catches migrants eating swans”. The clip in question comes from an episode of the TV series Animal Squad that aired in 2010, and shows an RSPCA officer investigating a tip-off that two men had taken a pair of swans from a local park in Birmingham.
In the episode, the officer visits the house of a “Romanian family”, and finds the remains of what she describes as “either a goose or a swan” being cooked in a pot. A member of the family she speaks to claims that the bird was bought from a shop and may have been released into the park for children to play with. At the end of the episode, the narrator says that there was “insufficient evidence to prosecute the family suspected of taking a swan from the local park”.
An RSPCA inspector did separately reportedly suggest the shooting of a pair of swans in Dorset in 2013 may have been done by someone “non-British” who “considered these swans to be food”, but did not appear to provide further evidence for this claim.
What about carp?
Mr Farage was less specific about where he believed carp were being taken from ponds, and we also asked Reform UK what this claim was based on.
It’s possible that Mr Farage was referring to a video shared on social media in March, in which a man claimed two men were taking koi carp from a pond in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The man reportedly told a local newspaper that he believed the men were “asylum seekers” and claimed they’d also been eating seagulls, without appearing to provide evidence for either of these claims.
In a statement at the time, Hampshire Police said: “Following a review of the evidence available to police at this time, a decision has been made to file this investigation pending any further information coming to light.”
We’ve also seen various older news reports anecdotally linking eastern European migrants to illegal carp fishing in the UK, though in some cases this relates to rivers or angling lakes rather than “ponds”.
For example, a BBC news report from 2006 suggested “eastern Europeans” were catching carp and other fish to eat from angling lakes in Southampton, Hampshire, in violation of rules which stated any fish caught in the lakes should be returned.
The article said that signs in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Latvian and Portuguese had been put up at two lakes, warning that “all fish must be returned to the water alive”.
Similar reports of illegal fishing for food in Cambridgeshire, allegedly by “Eastern European migrants”, were also covered by the BBC in 2015.
We asked the Angling Trust if it was aware of any more recent reports of this nature but at the time of writing had not heard back.
