Why Can't I Take an Orange Through Customs?

http://priceonomics.com/why-cant-i-take-an-orange-through-customs/

by gordon_freeman • 12 years ago

108 82 12 years ago

priceonomics.com

leoc2• 12 years ago

Try taking a set of bagpipes into the US.

epochwolf• 12 years ago

Are you talking about this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/bagpipes-new-ha... ?

leoc2• 12 years ago

Yes!

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

Or a Steinway piano. - http://www.today.com/id/30442451#.VG1nVYVb9hF

readerrrr3• 12 years ago

So if you plan to take your laptop it is better to upload the disk image and buy a new one in the states? I'm assuming the TSA can force a foreigner to unlock and then copy the disk.

Wow this is sick:

http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2011/06/10-of-tsas-worst-ac...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2014/07/07/th...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba030UmbkCo

http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2011/05/nottheonion-tsa-sea...

saryant• 12 years ago

TSA has nothing to do with entry into the country—you don't encounter them on arrival unless you have an onward flight.

CBP handles immigration and customs.

tkmcc• 12 years ago

US customs officers can, upon attempted border entry, search and seize any baggage of any US or foreign citizen without a warrant or probable cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

TorKlingberg• 12 years ago

What does your post have to do with bagpipes?

maradori• 12 years ago

Are Kinder eggs still banned in the US? I remember my former manager got in lots of trouble trying to cross the border with some of them.

dsl• 12 years ago

Kinda. Kinder now has a line of chocolates that they sell in the US, but the "surprise eggs" are still banned.

The problem is the eggs contain a small toy inside the chocolate, and small children either don't see it or don't know not to eat it. The EU is considering banning them too because they have had children die.

WildUtah• 12 years ago

A customs dog sniffed me out and his handler searched my bag in 2010. I had some chocolates infused with orange oil in my pack.

She was satisfied but apparently you can't bring oranges into Mexico from the USA or vice versa.

Since then I always pack breakfast for early morning flights across the border, but I'm careful to eat it before landing or leave it for the aeromozas to clean up.

vsloo• 12 years ago

A customs dog once sniffed out my gf's orange zest scented shampoo. Got cornered by some officers and had to empty my suitcase. Security isn't always this strict though so it's pretty inconsistent at best.

flashman• 12 years ago

Bill Bailey on Australian Customs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s5AF4ahrOk

grecy• 12 years ago

Australia has extremely strict customs because the flora and fauna is unique and has been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years.

We also don't have things like Rabies, and we'd like to keep it that way.

notjosh• 12 years ago

FYI: Australia has "Australian bat lyssavirus" which is indeed a thing very much like rabies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_bat_lyssavirus. It surprised me when I learned about its existence :)

gadders3• 12 years ago

The UK doesn't have rabies either.

jdmichal• 12 years ago

Not that it matters. A bite from an Australian animal would kill you before the rabies kick in anyway.

gojomo• 12 years ago

Similar to the medfly 'Breeders' of this article, there's also informed speculation that covert actors are intentionally bringing Australian insects to California to destroy Eucalyptus trees. See:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/22/157189794/invasive-pests-or-ti...

Freeboots• 12 years ago

I wonder if that counts as biological warfare?

I mean, theoretically you could really hurt an entire industry. A large Fruit Fly outbreak in certain countries could have really affect gdp

trhway2• 12 years ago

I wonder if that counts as biological warfare?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_potato_beetle

i remember how we, schoolchildren, collected these beetles which "American imperialists send to destroy our potato crops". That could have easily been photo of me only i was in USSR, not in Eastern Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_potato_beetle#G... :)

AlyssaRowan• 12 years ago

I understand it does, yes. The infamous Porton Down apparently has (or at the very least had) a large collection of nasty agricultural pests and knows how to weaponise them (and presumably how to defend against them). This kind of thing has indeed been explored in the context of warfare.

http://cns.miis.edu/cbw/agchron.htm chronicles some cases (and several hoaxes).

wmil• 12 years ago

The article doesn't mention it, but the perpetrator's likely motivation is also very interesting.

Eucalyptus trees cause forest fires.

rtkwe• 12 years ago

How? Do they produce a much larger volume of leaf litter or catch fire easier?

Patrick_Devine• 12 years ago

OK, that explains produce. Why the War on Kinder Surprise? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise

davidw5• 12 years ago

My Italian friends think it's a bit odd that you can't buy one of those in the US, because they're dangerous for children, but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns. I can't do much more than shrug: every place has its contradictions.

Additionally: I personally hate the damn things. My kids love to get them because of the stupid surprise. Sometimes my daughter just ignores the chocolate completely. It's a bit of marketing akin to the McDonalds Happy Meal with the cheap plastic toy. A far greater injustice in the world is not being able to import prosciuttos and similar cured meats.

gambiting3• 12 years ago

There are things like this absolutely everywhere. My favourite is that where I come from you can't fill your own LPG gas tank in the car, it has to be done by a "qualified" person(because it's too dangerous to do it yourself!), which means you have to ask someone at the station to do it for you, but when filling any other fuel we have those little locks on the pistol which let you put it in and leave it until the tank is full.

In the UK on the other hand it is the exact opposite. You can fill your own LPG tank no problem, but I have not seen any pistols with the locks on them, because "it would be dangerous, what if you leave it in and forget about it??". It's just a matter of interpretation, a thing that is seen as dangerous in one country is completely fine in another.

moron4hire3• 12 years ago

> but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns.

You really don't know how the US or guns work, do you?

raldi• 12 years ago

Crappy chocolate, crappy toy. Yet somehow, put them together and kids find them irresistible.

lazyant• 12 years ago

fwii you couldn't take them from Canada into the US until very recently, I read something or the other about now being allowed, don't quote me at the border.

gadders3• 12 years ago

I had Fortnum and Masons Pork Pie taken from me by US Customs at Seattle Airpot :-(

samwillis• 12 years ago

I think thats the saddest things I have read today!

gadders3• 12 years ago

It was a present for a Brit friend working at Amazon.

MrDosu• 12 years ago

Try to smuggle a pack of coffee through EU customs. If you think the agricultural ministry can be bad, try messing with the tax people.

imjk• 12 years ago

Eh, I just returned from Jamaica with a bag of coffee and declared it on my customs form. The agent just waived me through.

phantom7842• 12 years ago

"TSA officer and her barking dog"

The TSA is the agency that checks you for weapons before you enter the airport. Customs & Immigration would care about the oranges, so the woman probably worked for them.

"If you cross any state line, a human asks you if you’re carrying any fruits and vegetables."

I've only ever heard of this happening when entering California.

craigwblake• 12 years ago

I've only ever heard of this happening when entering California.

I've driven through 36 states and only seen this in California as well, and even then it's only on some highways entering California.

drdeadringer• 12 years ago

and even then it's only on some highways entering California

When I entered California several times from the northern border with Oregon, it was like every other state-crossing to me -- oh, a state line, simply keep driving.

When I heard about being stopped at the California border about a month ago on another social website, I was confused until informed that these border checks were more so along the edges with Nevada.

phantom7842• 12 years ago

The one time I drove into California, it was at like 6:00am or so and the station was closed, so I just drove through. And even then, it was pretty far in from the actual state line. Definitely not the most impenetrable border protection.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

You'll see signs like "importation of firewood prohibited" or "clean off your fucking boat" but yeah, California's the only one that stops you.

bane• 12 years ago

I once had a fun experience. I was return to the U.S. after a stay in South Korea. My hosts gave me a box of grapes as a going away gift, I figured I'd eat them on the plane.

Short story, I didn't. And I didn't throw them away. Customs asked me if I had any fruits, I told them yes I had grapes. They looked at each other and then looked at me.

"Sir, we're going to have to see these grapes"

"okay, if I'm not allowed to bring them in I can just toss 'em"

quiet stare down while the other customs officer inspected my grapes

"sir, where did you get these grapes?"

"Korea"

they turned to look at each other again, apparently I was bringing in the equivalent of a WMD

about 5 minutes later the officer doing the inspection finally looked at the label "product of California, U.S.A."

laughter ensued, I was given my grapes and allowed on through

razster• 12 years ago

Seems like someone could take advantage of this by making fake product labels.

snake_plissken• 12 years ago

About 5 years ago In my early 20s I tried to bring some tulip bulbs back from the Netherlands. I bought them after the main season, in November when they no longer had the official inspection stamps on the packages. I declared one package of them and tried to bullshit the CPB lady about how the stamp fell off and how they were for my mom for her birthday. After some time I acquiesced and when she asked if I had any other bulbs, I took them out for her. I take comfort in knowing I have a record, somewhere deep in the bowls of Fort Meade or Bluffdale, of attempted agricultural products smuggling.

Looking back on the tulips thing, I probably wouldn't try to do it again, not because I could get in trouble, but because I now know there is a slim chance I could introduce some random organism into a new ecosystem where it could wreak havoc. Yet at the same time, I can't tell if the whole no agricultural products rules for individuals crossing borders is bullshit or not. Almost all of the major invasive species in the US (snakefish, ashwood beetle, fire ants) were introduced via container ships.

samspot• 12 years ago

We went to Mexico for a day trip and brought an apple in our cooler. Our friends fed us so we never opened the cooler. We forgot at customs and said we had nothing to declare. Customs decided to search our cooler and found the apple. We explained that we had brought it with us but forgotten about it. When he said it was contaminated from being in Mexico, I thought he was telling a joke, but he was dead serious. Thankfully he just confiscated it and let us on our way.

deerpig• 12 years ago

The last time I visited the States I forgot that I had a half eaten tuna sandwhch that I'd bought in the departure lounge in Bangkok. I was detained for an hour and threatened with fines and jail time! An sweet elderly woman from Hong Kong was sitting next to me because she had forgotten that she had the equivilant of three dollars in loose change in the bottom of her purse which she hadn't declared. She couldn't speak any english and customs didn't even try to find a translator, they kept shouting at her at high speed with his hand on the baton on his belt as if he was going to pull it out and strike her. She was in tears. I tried to translate the best I could in my broken Cantonese in between trying to figure out what they had against tuna sandwiches. It was almost surrealistic. Customs in Mainland China, who are not the most enduring bunch of people on their best day were still orders of magnitude more polite and civil than what I saw that day.

Last night I was in a bar in Phnom Penh and an American yelled at me because I didn't agree instantly that America was the greatest country on earth. I have nothing against America, I grew up there, and there are a lot of very decent kind people there. But I don't live there, and after a long string of incidents like the one with customs I can't honestly say that America is the greatest country on earth. There are places which are better and places that are much much worse. I've lived in both.

My guess is that the guy yelling at me had something against tuna sandwiches as well....

jlaurend• 12 years ago

You're allowed to take up to $10,000 into the US without declaring it, I believe. I'm guessing they sent her to the room because they were afraid she was trying to illegally immigrate and just complaining about the money to try and rattle her. Some of the horror stories about US Customs are so ridiculous.

When I came back from China last year through Toronto, they sent me to the room because they thought I was bringing food (even though I didn't declare any nor did I have any). Luckily the guy in the room there was more reasonable and let me go quickly without a hassle. Going through customs as an American is terrifying enough...can't imagine being a non-American.

There's a lot of good and bad about America. Unfortunately customs is on the bad sad often times...which happens to be the first impression a lot of people get of the country.

Why Can't I Take an Orange Through Customs?

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