Posts featuring the rumor appeared on YouTube and widely across X, where one user wrote (archived): "It is well documented that migrants have been eating swans and carp in Britain for decades." Another added (archived): "It's been going on for years. We have a massive amount of camping migrants in my town and they eat carp and there's only 2 swans left out of the 20 or so I saw when I moved here."
The claim surfaced after British politician Nigel Farage appeared (archived) on a British radio station called LBC on Sept. 24, 2025. During a phone-in on LBC host Nick Ferrari's morning show, the lawmaker, who leads Reform UK, a right-wing political party, was asked (archived) about U.S. President Donald Trump's and Vice President JD Vance's unfounded claim a year earlier that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs (archived).
When Ferrari asked whether the cats and dogs rumor was "utterly nonsensical," Farage 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?
He added that neither he nor Ferrari could "prove or disprove this," but when asked who was responsible, he said: "People who come from countries where it's quite acceptable to do so." Farage then noted that he believed it was Eastern Europeans or Romanians, before somewhat rowing back on the claim about migrants eating carp and swans by saying: "I'm not saying that, I'm just putting it back as an argument."
A spokesperson for The Royal Parks, the charity that manages London's eight Royal Parks that Farage specifically cited during the show, said via email: "We've not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans in London's eight Royal Parks."
Snopes contacted the
The claim about carp, however, appeared to be more well-documented over the years. Full Fact, a British fact-checking website, listed several examples of reports about Eastern European migrants poaching carp in England (archived). According to one such article cited, the Environment Agency, a government body that, among other roles, monitors fish populations in the U.K., introduced enforcement officers in areas affected by fish poaching in 2012.
We also reached out to the Environment Agency and the Angling Trust to ask whether the increased measures to prevent fish poaching mentioned in the 2012 article were still in place and whether, specifically, carp poaching by Eastern European anglers was an issue in 2025. We await replies to our queries.
Snopes also contacted Farage to ask whether he believed the claim that migrants were eating swans and carp as this was unclear from his exchange with Ferrari. We await a reply.
In the U.K., it is a crime to kill, injure or take a wild bird. The British monarch can claim ownership of any unmarked mute swans in the U.K., while other types of swans, namely Bewick's swans and whooper swans, are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The British government also regulates catch limits for fish, including carp, which it is an offense to breach.
Tracking the claim
Claims about migrants eating animals in the U.K. pre-dated Farage's 2025 remarks. For example, on July 4, 2003, British tabloid newspaper The Sun ran a front-page story (archived) titled "Swan Bake," with a subheadline reading: "Asylum seekers steal the Queen's birds for barbecues."
According to Nick Medic — a journalist who would go on to complain about The Sun's reporting to the Press Complaints Commission, a former British press regulator whose function is now carried out by the Independent Press Standards Organisation — the story detailed how "Eastern European poachers" would lure swans into traps to cook and eat them.
The Sun story was based, according to Medic and a Guardian newspaper article from later that year, on a Metropolitan Police report. However, the force told Medic it never released such a report to The Sun. The police department, as reflected in a correction issued by The Sun in December 2003 on the PCC's orders, said it had not made any arrests in relation to swan poaching offenses. Following Farage's comments in September 2025, The Sun acknowledged the department's conclusion.
Similarly, in 2013, police in Lincoln reportedly investigated the disappearance of at least five swans that they suspected people had taken for food. However, the reporting at the time did not identify any suspects or their nationality.
As the claim resurfaced in 2025, one
Medic wrote in a 2004 opinion piece in The Telegraph newspaper that The Sun followed up its reporting on the alleged swan poaching with a similar report about fish stocks in rivers being low due to poaching by "asylum seekers."
Though it was not possible to find a copy of this article, Full Fact found a 2006 BBC report about "migrant workers" from Eastern Europe illegally catching carp, perch and roach in Southampton. According to the BBC, an Environment Agency spokesperson said the department had received reports of illegal fishing but had not seen any environmental impact.
In 2015, Paul Thomas, a regional enforcer with the Angling Trust, a nonprofit representing anglers, reportedly said fish poaching was a "serious issue" in areas with "a large population of migrant anglers who came into the country from Eastern Europe for whom fishing for food is part of their culture."
In sum …
Though The Royal Parks said it had not received reports of swans being taken and eaten, police in England have investigated — both in 2003 and more recently — incidents where investigators believed people killed swans for food. However, Snopes found no evidence that these investigations led to arrests or convictions of suspects who were migrants.
Similarly, though the issue of poaching carp and other freshwater fish has been known about since at least 2006, it was not possible to determine whether migrants specifically were continuing this practice in 2025.