Smuggling Meat into the US
Ok, I live in the US and I’ve never been out of the country, so, this is something I have no experience in. However, it is something that people have been searching for and it’s been landing them on my diabetes blog on an entry about me smuggling candy at halloween time when I was a little kid.
So, there’s the typical things (or at least the things I think of as typical) to smuggle in. People. Fruits. Drugs. Cuban Cigars. Weapons. Those are the typical things I think about being smuggled into the US. Not meat. I mean, meat, is there really meat in other countries that we can’t get here. Or perhaps it’s because of the meats we have here the same meat from another country tastes better? But then, I was reading, and some of the meat people are trying to smuggle in (to the UK mind you, I couldn’t find much of anything about the US) is coming from countries whose animals have hand and foot disease. Why would anyone smuggle meat from those countries?
Not that anyone’s going to tell me why they’d smuggle meat into the US, but I thought that it was an interesting search term that popped up.
Drugs are definitely a biggie. I’ve traveled quite a bit, but the airport in Bangkok is by far the most secure airport I’ve ever been through. Thailand has had a really big problem with drug smuggling (apparently they grow the world’s best opium?) and they’ve cracked down on it a lot to maintain good relations with other countries.
I guess I can see the whole meat smuggling thing, to an extent… I remember when I moved to Africa, I had to get a ton of immunizations and medications for diseases we have mostly eliminated here in the US (like typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, etc.). I know that some diseases (including yellow fever, malaria, and bubonic plague) are transmitted through mosquitoes or fleas, OR through the consumption of contaminated meat. So, in that sense, I guess it makes sense to limit what meat can enter our country.
Maybe because it’s considerably cheaper. Small-scale businesses want to profit more and it’s a risk they are willing to take.
Its about brains partly. Literally cow brains.
Mad cow disease is one of the big risks. Plus, there was just a pork scare out of Ireland, I think last week.
Bottom line is people will attempt to smuggle anything they can if they can make a buck doing it. Especially if they buy some bad meat somewhere else for next to nothing and find a way to sneak it into the country where it can be mixed up a bit and sold for a premium.