Why are border smugglers trafficking bologna? | Hacker News Reader

Why are border smugglers trafficking bologna?

texasmonthly.com

77 pointsindigodaddy189 comments

> The Department of Agriculture prohibits travelers from bringing most pork products into the U.S. because they can carry maladies such as foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever.

I wonder what this actually looks like in practice? Is this a real risk or "we've always done it this way"? Do different non-US countries have different risk profiles?

The customs people took a chunk of prosciutto my parents brought back to the US that my Italian in-laws had given them. What a waste. And Italy takes its food very seriously and professionally. I'd even go so far as to say that it's mostly higher quality than in the US in many ways.

> Is this a real risk or "we've always done it this way"?

I assume the risk assessment assumes some percentage of sick pigs are contained within each. In the US, this percentage is tracked. From another country, the upper, and probably very realistic, bound is 100%. Think small, unvaccinated farm, or one that slaughters sick pigs because they need the money. It would be interesting to see their math.

Swine fever just recently has a vaccine. I doubt many US pigs are vaccinated: https://www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-african-...

I think lot of countries have restrictions like this to prevent foreign pests and diseases from coming in. Right now California is dealing with cockroaches from Turkestan and Florida with African snails. Its easy for pests to spread when there is no native predators. California also does further pest inspections if you enter by roads.

A vacuum sealed chunk of prosciutto is different than a crate of bananas or live fish or something.

I've read after Brexit truck drivers traveling from UK to EU can no longer bring sandwiches with them. So even EU has those rules.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55622331

Probably to the benefit of sandwich shops just on the other side of customs or some such.

At least for Australia and New Zealand, who are probably the most biosec paranoid countries, there are a large number of reasons. mostly do to with introduction of pests and other potentially ecologically damaging effects, see introduction of cane toads. Those pests can be anything from viruses to mites (see current bee crises) through to domestic animals. Part of this paranoia comes from the evolutional isolation, and part of it comes from the fact that they are islands, and so it is feasible to implement measures to block the importation of foreign materials.

Food, unless it has been thoroughly cooked or cured, is a risk and the diversity of stuff people bring back is enormous. Obviously Australia and New Zealand import food, but that requires licences and is regulated and inspected.

I would have thought that land border inspections would be less paranoid about food provided that the neighbouring country has similar regulations. But I guess that better describes e.g. mainland EU borders or the US-Canada border rather than the US-Mexico border.

Humans are funny. After having caused Australia’s Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, we now have decided to be in charge.

Same with the US and immigration..

And yes, of course it is more complicated than that but I cannot forgo of the irony of our existence.

I hope we really are learning from our past mistakes. The US tries to stop all kinds of foods from crossing the border including fruits and vegetables because of what other problems they might bring. I don't have any problem with the bologna being included. Seems like there's a market for it though, so local sources should increase and grow more popular.

The US-Canada border has the same restrictions. You can't bring many fresh foods over the border even if you're actually reimporting a product produced in the same country.

The US is extremely lax compared to NZ's biosafety laws.

If the problem is really about "maladies", I've always though that irradiating food products at customs would be a good compromise to allow people to keep what they brought (for a nominal fee).

Maybe it isn't effective against viruses or prions.

Maybe the public perception that irradiated food becomes radioactive is to strong.

Maybe the problem is actually about protecting domestic industry...

It is ineffective against prions, and not very effective against virus. But also, irradiating food is a complex process that depends on expensive machinery. It's not something that customs can do in a rush.

The risk is low, but the upside is essentially zero (from the point of view of customs)

From the point of view of customs, there is no upside to allowing people to bring anything through. So, that doesn't really explain why this is different from other things that are allowed.

>there is no upside to allowing people to bring anything through. So, that doesn't really explain why this is different from other things that are allowed.

The difference is the potential downside of some things as compared to other things. It's all about balancing risk.

If you only flagged items that are actually dangerous you wouldn't have the opportunity to flex your authority as often.

Do you want to be the head of the department that "saves American lives by preventing the import of contraband" a million times a year, or a thousand times a year? Who do you think gets more funding?

I think it's funny that you think Customs and Border Patrol agents have to justify their work at all. There were literal TV shows making them out to be the saviors of America.

They also don't need any excuse to flex their authority, they've been given broad ability to violate rights with very few specific requirements. Remember, these are the same people who can legally deny you entry to the US if you don't show them your facebook profile if you aren't a US citizen.

> because they can carry maladies such as foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever

sounds more like it's related to tariffs and whatnot, bologna is cooked, so there's no risk of spreading germs.

>so there's no risk of spreading germs.

This is not true. Prion diseases can for sure survive cooking.

Foot and mouth can too I believe.

> Prion diseases can for sure survive cooking.

but it's not found in the cuts used to make Bologna...

And BTW it's been heavily controlled and it was mostly a domestic threat spread in living animals through their food supply.

Hand foot and mouth disease is usually not lethal and it spreads through close personal contact. If they wanted to block it at the border, they should block the people, not the food.

My understanding is that Bologna is a bit like hotdogs, pretty much made out of whatever left over scraps they can find.

still pork meat, not related to prion.

coppa di testa [1] is made with srcaps from pork head, it was never involved in the ban regarding the "mad cow" disease

[1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppa_di_testa

once it goes through one of those machines that fully strips the bones you have no idea what its made out of.

once you start assuming that anything can end up in anything, everything can be depicted as dangerous.

do you really know what's inside fruit, vegetable, salad, juices, sodas etc?

do you really know what's inside domestic bologna sold and produced inside USA?

why imported one (main topic of the discussion) should be more dangerous, given that US are one of the worst places in the west for food handling?

I would assume the contrary, when in the US imported food is of better quality in general. And I am willing to spend to 2x or 3x cap to buy real Italian prosciutto from real Italian people than eat cheap, but US made ham.

p.s. my family home made cured meats for generations, we know exactly what they are made out of, what we put in it. Simple as that.

I mean I mostly agree with you, Guanciale is always going to be pork jowl. But cured sausages... a little less specific generally in terms of what primals/cuts you might source from... and at least in america where the primary touchpoint for bologna is oscar myer .. at that point it's more 'big hotdog' than anything.

I can imagine some very plausible pathways whereby some amount of lunch meat ends up eaten by pigs.

I would also wager you are far too confident that central nerves aren't ending up in the chubs.

Pork is not implicated in prion disease, according to NIAID. [0] It might make sense to suspect any particular bologna could contain other meats, but as TFA explains Mexican bologna tastes better because it doesn't contain beef (or presumably, venison.)

[0] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/prion-research

I don't believe it has to do with X country takes food more seriously. I do believe it has to do with labelling at some point, say something that is labelled from X country but is coming in from Y country. The person bringing it in from Y country will argue the label is true and that it is from X country but it just costs less in Y country. But, how can border agents guarantee that it is what the label says it is? They can't. Same thing with that prosciutto, you say it is Italian made but there is no way border agents can honestly guarantee that it is and that any possible bugs/bacteria/etc aren't in it. Also, I believe that it is the whole transport of such meat/agriculture products. Things like temperatures, packaging, labelling, etc are important when it comes to food safety. Something that is deemed unfit for human consumption may get a pass elsewhere. I'm pretty sure it is an 80% of the stuff out there is safe but 20% is unsafe so customs just tackles all 100% as unsafe to prevent mistakes.

You can't bring any Citrus either in the US (lemon, grapefruit, oranges...)

One of the problems for meat was also that people would bring homemade goods inside commercial containers, or bring wild animal meat...

My understanding of this, and this is also something that is enforced at certain us state borders as well, is this is primarily about insect and other parasites that may be on/in the fruit (or their eggs). I remember having to toss a bunch of fruit at the california border a few years back.

The risks are very real. The US pork industry is substantial in scale, and because of a combination of geographic isolation and legal measures like this, has managed to keep several nasty pathogens out.

Remember when Bill Gates was going around about 2 decades ago, warning everyone of the risk of a global pandemic? The specific scenario/simulation his foundation used as an example was a mutation of swine flu emerging in rural Brazil then making the leap to the global food system via the US.

I get its frustrating not to be able to take stuff home. I gained a dozen pounds of water bloat I ate so much charcuterie in Tuscany. But the bottom line of these laws is that the health of the industry as a whole matters more than us individuals enjoying what's ultimately a luxury not necessity.

Aside: I'd say Italy is a mixed bag in terms of food handling. I toured a cattle ranch and it was pretty grim. Lifelong intensive confinement seemed to be the norm. But what I would say I loved about Italy is the importance food is given in ordinary life. Sure, I'm not overly romanticizing things, people of people just order some dominos in Italy too, but I think it's fair to say there's a higher priority paid to proper food vs the US.

>Sure, I'm not overly romanticizing things, people of people just order some dominos in Italy too

I don't think very many do, given that the Italian Domino's franchise recently went bankrupt [0] having managed to open 29 of its planned 880 restaurants.

Of course, plenty of Italians eat fast food (McDonald's is reasonably successful there), just not imported American versions of Italian food.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/10/dominos-retrea...

Yeah, you're right now that I think about it.

I have a long standing personal joke about how no matter where you go in the world, you'll see Domino's delivery scooters there most likely, except in the US. I dunno why I find that so amusing but I do.

> The US pork industry is substantial in scale,

an inhumane in operation. A lot of the vulnerability to disease outbreaks animals suffering under industrial farming have is the result of the horrifying conditions they live in. I wont claim that if we treated animals better the need to regulate what enters the country wouldn't exist, but it would make outbreaks less disastrous.

I hate to break it to you, but if you want to feed 8B people, industrial agriculture is the only way.

I think it's possible to have large scale industrial agriculture while still not being needless cruel to the animals you raise. It just requires people at those corporations to give up a little bit of their profits instead of giving up their humanity

It's not so much about Italy's food regulations but rather the fact that individual travellers are not certified importer entities thus there is no reasonable way to assure the piece of prosciutto your parents bought was actually produced in strict compliance with American & Italian laws.

There was a time when US border patrol at the canada-US border was most concerned if you were bringing in any citrus fruits, regardless of where you’re going.

I’m happy to share that I have never done such a thing to keep the New York, Pennsylvania or Ohio citrus industry safe.

(While ignoring that Toronto was exporting hundreds of trucks a day of garbage to Michigan dumps)

Then there is the current ban on most Personal fresh egg/chicken imports from US into Canada due to avian flu outbreak, just to make sure I don’t feed them uncooked to a bird in Canada (as opposed to… eating them), ignoring the fact that birds fly and pose 1000x bigger threat where I live, <100km from the border.

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/services/fpa-apa/bringing-apport...

>ignoring the fact that birds fly and pose 1000x bigger threat.

Are you suggesting the border control become bird hunters? That'd be pretty fun.

Border control enforcing whatever the current bans on birds are does not impact the effort (or lack thereof) on other controls, such as flying birds. Different people, different jobs.

It has more to do with the fact that the current ban has negligible impact on solving the core problem.

Useless laws are detrimental if you want a society that respects and trusts the law.

It’s what happens when there’s a problem and every department gets a memo asking how it can contribute.

Instead of sending resources toward what can actually solve the problem (e.g. taking money from your department to testing agricultural flocks), just create some senseless barriers that won’t help anyone at all and distract yourself from whatever your dept’s focus should be.

Win-win?

I would assume a lot of this prosecution and confiscation is more a function of tariffs and ag industry protectionism. Am I really to believe that a tube of bologna is a disease threat to American pig farming?

This is about travelers. Volume is extremely limited. Disease threat is a reasonable belief.

The article is about travelers bringing processed meats. So because its banned, it gets smuggled, which now is a major human health concern due to improper storage, also consumes resources and time from our CBP from looking for actual threats. Coming from Mexico, bugs don’t mind national borders on their own accord, and a product that is legal 100 ft to the south but illegal just a skip away makes little sense.

I understand strong restrictions on overseas seeds and bugs (especially in New Zealand’s case where they have a defined, delicate ecosystem), but it just seems like US is beating up on its little neighbor.

I’m just saying this whole article details a little corner of American law enforcement that is an overzealous interpretation of a reasonable, because SOMEONE out there made a big stink about it. “Whoa whoa whoa, you can’t bring this low cost meat product across the line to sell in US markets!! US Markets are only for big US Farming Corporations!

This would seem to be relevant:

"Defining Law Enforcement's Role in Protecting American Agriculture from Agro-Terrorism" by Terry Knowles ISBN 1437929710, 9781437929713

On page 141:

"For example, Chimex brand bologna has been found to foster the CSF (classical swine fever) virus. A high death loss - 60-80% -could occur if the CSF virus entered a healthy swine population."

Losing 4/5ths of your pigs...probably justifies being extra careful about what ppl. are allowed to bring into the country....

I think this is potentially a pretty fair startup idea. Here in Michigan I knew farmers who had meat packing plants on the farm. Most of them closed because they couldn't compete on price with the big meatpackers. There are also several large meatpacking plants in Detroit though most of them have been closed for up to thirty years.

Here's a niche where you could compete as long as you could get distribution and create a strong brand name. There's no good reason you couldn't create bologna just as good as the Mexicans. In fact there's a good chance you could export it to Canada as well.

Additionally they probably couldn't compete with food safety regulatory requirements and related baseline costs required for revenue positive distribution.

https://www.sqfi.com/partners/compliance-and-integrity-progr...

https://safefoodalliance.com/food-safety-resources/what-is-g...

https://www.fda.gov/food/hazard-analysis-critical-control-po...

https://www.sysco.com/dam/jcr:596b9459-7e35-4ee0-8a4d-16b8bd...

German living in Switzerland here - I would dare say meat is one of the most commonly smuggled items into Switzerland.

The price of meat here is discouragingly high (IMO rightly so), and incredibly cheap in neighboring Germany.

The duty-free limit is also incredibly low (1kg per person and day), similar to the amount of spirits (1L per), and the customs you pay after hefty.

A lot of the Swiss I know do their grocery shopping for meat and some alcohols in Germany.

The statistical likelihood of being stopped is slim enough that its not even considered "smuggling".

The problem is, Germany (or France for Romandie and Italy for Ticino) is EU - unless you look at labels closely, that cheap meat is probably sourced from the eastern countries like Poland which have truly abysmal record on meat quality and safety (ie using salt for roads for meat/food and distributing it also in surrounding countries). If its from Germany and cheap, be assured the lowest allowed standards were adhered to (or not).

Swiss have mostly higher safety standards than EU, plus much higher wages. Thus the prices.

As for smuggling - I do it too... but it depends which border crossing you use. On some, chances for search are maybe 20-30%. Way too high risk to save maybe 100-200 chf and risk a much higher fine. On some crossings I know nearby to France, practically 0 (but even at those, I have sworn border cops are never there till I saw them once in 10 years...)

Oh aye, I remember the supermarket meat quality while living in Germany being variable.

Where I live now (still EU) the origin and various other traceability information has to be available, and for some reason meat quality is far higher.

Cool article, funny to think about people smuggling bologna but it makes sense!

Really got a kick out of the part where they mentioned people insisting on Mexican mayonnaise - mostly because it’s a contrast to a recent nytimes article about Mac salad on Hawaii where the interviewee insisted something like “it HAS to be Hellman’s mayo”.

I’m not a bologna fan (or spam fwiw) but can someone smuggle up some choriqueso tacos for me please?

Lastly it’s great to read about a working Malinois - tough job all things considered

> artisanal bologna

Two words I never thought I'd see next to each other.

Growing up we ate the Oscar Meyer product. Not great, but when you're 10 years old, it's fine. But they've got a point - bologna for adult tastes just doesn't exist, and someone should give it a whirl.

They call it mortadella, and it features pistachios.

What Americans call bologna, it isn't what Italians call bologna or mortadella.

Whatever the hell is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_sausage vs the real deal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortadella

But to be honest I always thought mortadella was overrated. I'm more of a salame kind of guy.

>it isn't what Italians call bologna

Nitpicking, but Italians don't call it Bologna anyway. In Italy Bologna is just one very specific thing: a city (where I'm from :))

specifically, traditionally mortadella from Bologna is without pistaches, I prefer the variant we have in central Italy (the one from Rome), that always contains them.

Original mortadella was born in Latium, Bologna made it popular.

Yeah, and we have zero products called "Bologna" nor the awful "baloney". That food looks more like salame tipo Praga.

I'm from Piedmont, and I've heard it called bologna a couple times, though I know mortadella is the common name.

I've read that bologna was invented as a knock off mortadella. If true, it makes sense that there isn't really "artisanal" bologna.

> honest I always thought mortadella was overrated

> I'm more of a salame kind of guy.

two times wrong:

- mortadella is delicious, if you don't like it, fine, you're the rounding error, but nobody is over selling it, people just love it because what's not to love about it?

- salame is not an alternative to mortadella, it's a completely different product (mortadella is cooked, salame is air-dried), in the same way a steak is not an alternative to bresaola (same animal, different process).

um, they're both food, are they not?

and yeah salame definitely better.

> um, they're both food, are they not?

ice cream and broccoli are both food too...

> and yeah salame definitely better.

according to your taste maybe, and that's completely fine

but AFAIK people love them both.

Go to a sandwich shop that has them both, and you'll probably find two sandwiches on the menu that are identical up to substituting salami and mortadella.

I would be very surprised to find a menu anywhere, except for maybe in some high modernist bullshit cuisine, that substitutes ice cream and broccoli.

Ever been to Italy, where nortadella is from?

I can assure you it is the contrary.

Mortadella is also more popular because it is perceived as lighter and with a smoother flavour.

more specifically they're both what we'd call "lunch meats" in the US

The pictured mortadella with olives looks interesting. I'd wanna try that.

Those are pistachios, not olives.

Some have olives as well, I tried it myself years ago. Mortadella is delicious though in the US there are two versions for sale. I forgot which, is the one that is a bit too dry and not to my taste. In my 40s now I stay away from processed meats as much as I can.

I see this marketed all the time as olive loaf here in Appalachia. There's a lot of Italian influence here in the coal fields, but most of the Italian product names have died off.

The second image on the page depicts mortadela with pistachios.

But I am talking about the fourth image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Mortadel...

Mortadela_com_azeitonas.jpg

Auto translate tells me that "azeitonas" [Portuguese (Brazil) detected] translates to "olives" in english.

Yes, that's the correct translation of azeitonas.

That's because what is sold in America as bologna is mostly an American product and not actually descended from Italy. Like many things in the US, it was produced and sold by and for immigrants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZaOK0Cj3ug

> and it features pistachios.

Doesn't have to. Although they are common.

There's also the slavic "doctors sausage"[1], which ideally has much less fillers in it than American Bologna, but is very similar in concept.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor%27s_sausage

I remember watching a youtube video on Doctor Sausage. Next time I meet an older/elderly Eastern European who lived in the Soviet Union I should ask them how they remember it.

EDIT: here it is, this is the video I saw, includes one interview with a babushka:

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

I still see doctors sausage on sale in most of the Eastern European shops here, I'm told the recipe/process hasn't changed at all.

The recipe was carved into law a few different times.

They also call it Lebanon Bologna, and it's pretty easy to make from scratch at home. Common in Amish areas of the USA.

https://www.myfermentation.com/meat-and-fish/Lebanon-bologna...

I just realized I've never had bologna as an adult. Curious to try a bologna sandwich now.

Pan fry it and put it between white bread with pickle slices and a little mayo + salt/pepper

Delicios but really unhealthy in my oppinion

Don't worry I'm not expecting this to be healthy or become a staple of my diet lol

About every five years or so I feel like I don't remember why I don't eat bologna so I buy a pound and eat baloney sandwiches for a week (because when I eat sandwiches I do the sameish sandwich all week). After about three days I go to the bathroom and remember why I don't eat bologna sandwiches regularly.

It's very fatty and greasy.

If health is the only reason you eat food I feel really bad for you.

off topic

"The quantities of intercepted bologna are so large that it’s hard to believe "

I bet it's easy to train the dogs to find this...

hahaha those dogs are definitely living their best life

No artisanal bologna? I had some in a breakfast sandwich at my local diner just last week. Awesome!

“The hull of a Boeing 727 but made entirely of flesh”. This article is fun.

I still don't get it. This is literally prison food.

The title sounds like a Michael Scott joke

ok but does it taste different?

It uses different ingredients (purely pork, no filler of chicken or beef), so... Yes.

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