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Airport sniffer dogs are finding cheese and sausages in holidaymakers' luggage but failing to detect Class A drugs, a report found.

Six dogs at Manchester airport - which are kept at a cost of £1.25 million - did not sniff out any heroin or cocaine during a six-month period studied by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.

The report said the dogs "made multiple accurate detections, but most were of small amounts of cheese or sausages, wrongly brought back by returning British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to UK public health".

It added: "Heroin and cocaine were assessed as 'very high' priority within both air passengers and freight.

"Yet, according to the data provided by Border Force, the dogs had made no Class A drugs detections in the period November 2014 to June 2015."

The team of detector hounds were trained to search for illegal drugs, tobacco, cash and "bush meat".

Each had a speciality and were trained to detect either money, products of animal origin (POAO), tobacco or drugs.

Over the period the dogs helped seize more than 46,000 cigarettes, 60kg of tobacco, 181kg of illegal meat, and £28,000 cash.

The report said while the deterrent effect of having sniffer dogs was difficult to measure, the seizures alone represented a low return on the £1.25 million spent on new kennels and the costs of operating the unit.

The report concluded there needed to be a review of which flights were targeted and how the dogs were best used.

The dogs were successful on three occasions at detecting illegal drugs, finding small amounts of Class B substances. They also found tablets of human growth hormone, Viagra and Bromazepam.

Manchester airport is the third largest in the UK and handled 22 million passengers between 2014 and 2015, with flights arriving from 200 destinations - the most of any UK airport.