Border guards have seized about one million pounds of pork products entering the United States illegally at the port of New York/Newark, New Jersey.
They will be incinerated to make sure no African Swine Fever that might be in the pork can infect North American pigs.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency said it’s the biggest seizure in history.
It undermines the credibility and integrity of Chinese shipments.
“This was highly orchestrated,” said Stephen Maloney, the Customs and Border Patrol’s acting port director for the Port of New York/Newark. He said this was a concerted effort to conceal product.
More than 100 CBP agricultural specialists and K-9 (sniffer dog) teams worked to uncover the prohibited food.
The pork was smuggled in various ways including ramen noodle bowls to Tide detergent containers, said deputy chief agricultural specialist Basil Liakakos.
In some cases the packaging in the shipment matched the products on the manifest, authorities said, but the contents inside were prohibited pork. In other cases, the pork was simply packaged among the other products.
CBP teams are working hard to keep African Swine Fever, a highly transmissible, deadly virus of pigs, out of the U.S.
The ASF virus can survive for 150 to 180 days in fresh meat. In frozen meat, reports say the virus can live indefinitely.
Officials announced this seizure of more than 50 shipping containers during a press conference Friday morning at a warehouse in Elizabeth, N.J.
