CLAIM
“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 happened, is happening here?” Nigel Farage speaking on LBC, September 24, 2025
IN BRIEF
Nigel Farage was being interviewed on the radio when he was asked about previously backing Donald Trump’s discredited claims that Haitians living in the US were eating cats and dogs. Farage went on to claim that eastern European immigrants in Britain were eating swans and carp.
WHAT’S THE STORY?
The Reform UK leader was being interviewed on LBC and host Nick Ferrari pulled him up on a previous exchange where Farage had bet £10 that Trump’s claims that Haitians were eating cats and dogs were true. Ferrari said he’d lost that bet and in an apparent attempt to deflect, Farage made the claim about swans and carp.
He said: “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 happened, is happening here?”
"They're eating the carp. They're eating the swans." Nigel Farage doubles down on his bet that immigrants were eating cats and dogs in America. He now suggests there's a 'similar story' in Britain. pic.twitter.com/PFLQYL7SIA
— LBC (@LBC) September 24, 2025
Ferrari interjected to ask whether Farage was talking about eastern Europeans, specifically Romanians. Farage replied: “So I believe.”
The Royal Parks was quick to rubbish Farage’s statement, saying: “We’ve not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans in London’s eight Royal Parks.
Our wildlife officers work closely with the Swan Sanctuary to ensure the welfare of the swans across the parks.”
His comments were condemned, with Fizza Qureshi telling The Independent: “What Nigel Farage’s comments do show is his willingness to peddle disinformation from unverified social media and far-right organisations to deliberately whip up more hatred against migrants.”
Labour MP Clive Lewis added: “When a public figure begins to peddle wild conspiracy and grotesque exaggeration, from migrants eating swans to hinting at unknown harms from paracetamol, it reveals a troubling approach: deliberately feeding fear, confusion, and distrust.”
WHERE HAS THIS COME FROM?
The swans claim is a variation of one which has done the rounds for more than 20 years. In 2003, The Sun found itself in hot water over its front page “Swan Bake”. According to a Press Gazette piece at the time, the story read: “Callous asylum seekers are barbecuing the queen’s swans. East European poachers lure the protected Royal birds into baited traps, an official Metropolitan Police report says.”
Presswise, at the time the press regulator, investigated and found that no one had been charged in relation to such an offence.
The Sun printed a correction: “While numerous members of the public alleged that the swans were being killed and eaten by people they believed to be eastern European, nobody has been arrested in relation to these offences and we accept that it is not therefore possible to conclude yet whether or not the suspects were indeed asylum-seekers.”
FACT CHECK RATING
False.
Farage appears to have simply reheated age-old migrant scare stories about eastern Europeans that weren’t true at the time and aren’t today. He loses extra points for a lack of originality.
