Traveller declares biosecurity products to customs, shows them honey and gets a fine

Forums › Off topic › Traveller declares biosecurity products to customs, shows them honey and gets a fine

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#2300188 16-Aug-2019 09:31

sbiddle:

Seems very much like a she said, he said article. Having been though customs literally hundreds of times and declaring food much of the time I actually side with customs on this based on the information in that story.

Ticking your form is simply telling the officer you have one of more of those items. It's then up to you to tell them what they are, and what they contain. She did fail to declare she had honey.

It seems in some ways to be an argument about semantics. She ticked the box and when asked to clarify she said she had some natural remedies. When asked to show she produced the honey. She is saying the honey is part of the natural remedies, Border Security are saying honey is it's own category and needs to be declared on its own not part of a larger definition. Maybe is she had verbally declared food and showed honey she would have been ok.

Fred99

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#2300222 16-Aug-2019 10:16

wellygary:

Herbal medicines don't contain jars of honey ....

Some folks do think honey is a herbal medicine.

Anyway, I'm glad she got socked with the $400 fine. If that's indicating that customs were a bit over-zealous, then that's very good - much rather that than having them shown up to be lackadaisical about biosecurity or over-forgiving people who don't fully disclose.

Maybe they could add a separate notice to the forms listing specific items that people try to import that are common and high risk, seeds, honey/pollen, meat products, fruit/veg, but that list would probably get very long.

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#2300227 16-Aug-2019 10:22

wellygary:

kiwiharry: Purely based on that Stuff article, it stated:
However, she opened her luggage and showed the next officer the contents of her herbal medicine, which contained the honey.

From this it appears she wasn't trying to hide the honey. She ticked the box in the section for honey and willingly showed them what she had. MPI didn't find it as a result of a search of her bags, so maybe a warning should have been given if they wanted to be that pedantic.

I think the fine is unjustified.

But earlier in the article we are told

"for not declaring a jar of honey,"

Herbal medicines don't contain jars of honey ....

ummmmm

To support your immune system take 1-2 teaspoons daily. You can consume Honey either on its own, spread on toast or mixed in a drink. As a skin conditioner, use as DIY face mask.

Description:

GO Manuka Honey UMF 16+ contains 100% pure active Manuka Honey sourced from New Zealand. This premium UMF honey supports all round health and well-being. The anti-bacterial elements of Manuka Honey can support wound healing and may help skin conditions such as acne.
GO Healthy guarantees the UMF rating of all our Manuka Honey by independently testing every batch for NPA, UMF and MGO levels by accredited laboratories in New Zealand.

Benefits:

Effective natural anti-bacterial
Inderpendatly certified
Ideal for skin healing
YUMMY!

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Geektastic

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#2300230 16-Aug-2019 10:33

I'm sure someone can explain how a traveller eating honey on their morning toast affects bees.

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#2300231 16-Aug-2019 10:34

Fred99:
wellygary:

Herbal medicines don't contain jars of honey ....

Some folks do think honey is a herbal medicine.

Anyway, I'm glad she got socked with the $400 fine. If that's indicating that customs were a bit over-zealous, then that's very good - much rather that than having them shown up to be lackadaisical about biosecurity or over-forgiving people who don't fully disclose.

Maybe they could add a separate notice to the forms listing specific items that people try to import that are common and high risk, seeds, honey/pollen, meat products, fruit/veg, but that list would probably get very long.

Honey is used in NZ hospitals as a wound dressing.

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#2300232 16-Aug-2019 10:34

Fred99:
wellygary:

Herbal medicines don't contain jars of honey ....

Some folks do think honey is a herbal medicine.

Anyway, I'm glad she got socked with the $400 fine. If that's indicating that customs were a bit over-zealous, then that's very good - much rather that than having them shown up to be lackadaisical about biosecurity or over-forgiving people who don't fully disclose.

Maybe they could add a separate notice to the forms listing specific items that people try to import that are common and high risk, seeds, honey/pollen, meat products, fruit/veg, but that list would probably get very long.

Honey is used in NZ hospitals as a wound dressing.

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#2300234 16-Aug-2019 10:40

Geektastic: I'm sure someone can explain how a traveller eating honey on their morning toast affects bees.

As was explained to us when we brought a jar of (amazing, sigh) honey back from Australia a couple of years ago, there are several bee diseases causing widespread collapse of bee colonies around the world. In this particular case, Australia had not been proven to be free of the biggest one (not that Australia had it, just hadn't proved sufficiently rigorously that they didn't) which can potentially be spread by any bee product.

So I don't think there's any real argument here that biosecurity aren't doing the right thing by not allowing honey in. Just whether a $400 fine was justified when the traveler in question had clearly marked YES on her legal declaration form but there may have been some confusion by the officers checking her things.

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Fred99

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#2300250 16-Aug-2019 11:11

Geektastic: I'm sure someone can explain how a traveller eating honey on their morning toast affects bees.

In a few short words that they'll accept and believe - I kind of doubt it. One risk:

Source

In experiments carried out early in the 20th century, M. pluton was shown to survive for about 12
months in an incubator and at normal room and outdoor temperatures. In honey exposed to direct
sunlight the organism was destroyed after 3-4 hours, while in honey stored away from direct
sunlight the organism survived up to 7 months (White 1920).
In view of the above, M. pluton is classified as a potential hazard in imported honey.

TLDR. If you have some imported honey from a hive which was infected with EFB (european foul brood), then if a local bee eats any of that honey - quite likely as they're inclined to be attracted to honey, then they'll take that back to their hive, and you'll have introduced a new disease to NZ which would be destructive to our local industry.

Fred99

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#2300333 16-Aug-2019 11:15

Geektastic:

Honey is used in NZ hospitals as a wound dressing.

Interesting to note that the dressings can be approved by Medsafe as a therapeutic device, but no claims are allowed to be made that the dressings offers antibacterial or antibiotic properties.

networkn

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#2300352 16-Aug-2019 11:24

I have found Customs to be a law unto themselves, and it really feels they go out of their way to hire the grumpiest least understanding people around. I do want them to be very protective of our environment, it's a pretty delicate eco system we have, however I believe you can still do an excellent job AND be pleasant and understanding. I recall an incident at 1:30am on a flight back from Australia with two young kids, where my son had eaten a banana on the plane, and then "kept a little bit for later" unbeknownst to us. We declared everything we knew about but not the fresh fruit. They kept up there for 2 hours, insisting our kids be totally still sitting on seats and were very rude when we wanted to take them to the bathrooms (initially refusing until I mentioned that a puddle of pee was less desireable. We were ignored except for that for over an hour, then a woman came over threatening us with fines, acting like we had intentionally planned it out, confronted my son without warning which instantly made him cry. At that point I had well and truly enough, stepped between her and my son and firmly and politely insisted she stop speaking to us and bring a supervisor over. 25 minutes later a supervisor came over and took one look at the form the issue apologized profusely and let us go.

Yes I acknowledge our son did bring fresh fruit into the country, and we unintentionally made an error on our declaration, but there are ways to handle this.

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#2300412 16-Aug-2019 13:28

As people have said, we won't know the full story. But unfortunately I side the traveller who did everything required of her that I am aware of.

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#2300433 16-Aug-2019 14:08

Batman: I think that is quite ridiculous. She declared and them shows them the stuff! Story below.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115015520/traveler-ticked-box-on-arrival-card-still-fined-for-not-declaring-honey

This is an MPI issue - why do people keep blaming Customs when it's got nothing to with them? The [current] title of this topic belongs in the "dumbest headlines" thread.

sbiddle: Seems very much like a she said, he said article. Having been though customs literally hundreds of times and declaring food much of the time I actually side with customs on this based on the information in that story.

Ticking your form is simply telling the officer you have one of more of those items. It's then up to you to tell them what they are, and what they contain. She did fail to declare she had honey.

Customs don't care about food. With you "having been through customs literally hundreds of times" I would have thought you'd have figured this out by now 🤣

sbiddle

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#2300501 16-Aug-2019 16:21

kiwiharry: Purely based on that Stuff article, it stated:
However, she opened her luggage and showed the next officer the contents of her herbal medicine, which contained the honey.

From this it appears she wasn't trying to hide the honey. She ticked the box in the section for honey and willingly showed them what she had. MPI didn't find it as a result of a search of her bags, so maybe a warning should have been given if they wanted to be that pedantic.

I think the fine is unjustified.

How many times have you been through the MPI process in recent times?

I'd take a stab now and say over the past 10 years I've probably had somewhere around 80-90 times I've entered NZ from overseas trips. It's very common for me to bring in food, and also to declare other things that I've purchased overseas (non food). I'd take a random stab and say probably 75% of those trips would involve declaring things.

In every single one of those cases where I've declared things I can never recall a case where a MPI officer could ever be described as pedantic. Not one. The fact you've declared things and can either tell them what they are or show the goods makes them very happy that you're following process, even with products that are 100% safe. Not be truthful or try and hide things and they do get pedantic - just watch the border shows on TV.

One of three things happened. 1) She is either not being 100% truthful or 2) Somehow managed to wind somebody up the wrong way with her actions or 3) Struck it extremely unlucky with somebody from MPI who was having a very bad day.

My money would certainly be on either 1 or 2 (or a combination of both).

dejadeadnz

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#2300649 16-Aug-2019 22:38

It's beyond me why people want to get into wild speculations about this based on a "He said; she said" article. Generally speaking, I'll accept that the person is genuinely aggrieved from her perspective. Beyond that, there's no way that anyone has any kind of solid evidence to draw any kind of substantive conclusion and the unwarranted slights at Customs people at large or the above insinuation that the person was somehow (likely) to be lying or obnoxious are both equally unfair. "I travelled x times and nothing ever happened to me! Therefore, I will take a shot at someone's character!" is as unworthy of being taken seriously as "I went outside and it rained; therefore, I caused the rain!"

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#2300660 16-Aug-2019 23:14

Remember the "customs distroyed my motherboard with a pistol shaped heatsink" story?
End result was: no they didn't, they never touched it.

I accept that the traveller could have struck a MPI officer on a bad day, BUT I was under the impression that decisions on fines went through a second person/supervisor.

This is a Stuff story (Stuff is not news), and by the sounds of it a pretty vague one.
There is no way to draw any informed conclusion with the information available.

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

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