From: "Allan Goodall" <agoodall@hyperbear.com>
> They see _so_ many people trying to get away with something, from
That's a difference in culture. In Australia, someone coming in with
forged documents is of relatively minor concern - at worst they're Al
Qaeda types who are out to kill at most a few thousand people.
But a stick of peperoni could well be carrying any number of foreign diseases,
which could wreck a large part of our agricultural
Gee sounds like my birth state ( __was__ home, Sigh) - California -
"Do you have any Citrus Fruit?"
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:09:03 +1100 "Alan and Carmel Brain"
> <aebrain@webone.com.au> writes:
> On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 warbeads@juno.com wrote:
> Gee sounds like my birth state ( __was__ home, Sigh) - California -
<grin> This brings back childhood memories; my grandparents have an RV and
most summers we'd go off on long road trips with them. I'm specifically
remembering stopping in southern Oregon several times to finish off the
citrus in the rig - this was within sight of the Calif. border, mind
you.
I figure the California citrus thing for a scam, anyway. The first thing
we did when we got into the state proper was to buy more fruit - thus
keeping those California orchards profitable. Forget biological/pest
reasons; it's a marketing ploy!
Australia could well have legit bio worries - but California? Doubt it!
Brian.
> On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 23:09:03 +1100 "Alan and Carmel Brain"
> That's a difference in culture. In Australia, someone coming in with
The pepperoni incident was last summer, after the mad cow scare. It's quite
funny seeing the difference between U.S. and Canadian Customs. In the
U.S.
they are most worried about people sneaking into the country to work. They
don't seem to worry about how much stuff you bought abroad and whether or not
you should be paying taxes and/or duty. In Canada they are more worried
about what you bought in the U.S. and making sure you pay your share of GST on
it. They don't seem to be worried much about whether or not you're sneaking
into Canada to work.
Both countries are pretty careful about food. It's hard to patrol the border,
though, considering it's so big. Almost anything airborne that can affect the
food supply of the three countries (Canada, U.S., Mexico) is going to go
across the border anyway. Anything that gets into good chunks of the Canadian
water table _is_ going to go into the United States. The meat industries
of both countries are heavily integrated. The pepperoni was worrisome due to
mad cow, I guess. I do know of someone who was fined US$50 for trying to bring
a couple of oranges across the border from Canada to the U.S. (I'm not sure if
that's because they didn't immediately declare it, or if it was because they
were just bringing it across). The irony is that they were California oranges,
but I suppose it's possible that it could have picked up a weird bug in
Canada.
I know that Agriculture Canada has dogs at the airports for sniffing food, but
they're mostly worried about stuff from outside of the continent. The U.S.
does the same sort of thing. The Customs forms for both countries ask if you
visited a farm when you went across the border, so they are obviously worried
about picking up things from the other country (in spite of the fact that
Canadian and American health and agriculture bureaucracies have very, very
similar policies when it comes to treating diseases).
I can understand Australia being paranoid, seeing as how it's such a unique
biosphere cut off from the rest of the world. It really could devestate the
country's economy.