Contraband foodstuffs make a most-wanted list

Fruit is one of the items confiscated at Logan Airport. (Globe Photo / Erik Jacobs)

Terminal E at Logan Airport is Shakespearean in its drama: tears, heartfelt pleas, frantic negotiations, more tears. Observe a recent scene.

A woman whose flight originated in Jordan is sent to have her luggage inspected by the agriculture specialists because she has told officials she is carrying food. When they open her suitcase, they reveal a traveling pantry.

Customs officer, slapping on purple latex gloves: "What do we have here?"

Woman, calmly explaining that he's holding a bag of molokia: "It's dried vegetables. You boil it with meat and lemon. It's very tasty."

It passes muster.

Customs officer, his purple hand landing on a small satchel of golden spices: "And this?"

"It's called za'atar. You mix it with oil and eat it with bread."

Another victory for her.

Customs officer, unearthing a cookie tin sealed in duct tape: "What's in here?"

Woman, no longer calm: "I don't even like to carry food. But in Boston, you don't have these things. It's my mother-in-law. She made me."

The officer pries open the tin to reveal half a dozen perfectly ripe guavas. These are not entering the country.

All incoming international flights must funnel through US Customs and Border Protection. Sometimes 5,500 passengers arrive in a day, and between American tourists smuggling edible loot from distant shores for holiday gifts and visitors unfamiliar with procedures, there's endless bounty seized at the border. Much of it is given up without a fight. Other items are not.

After confiscating the woman's fruit, the officer finds another sealed cookie tin stuffed inside her suitcase. This contains meat-filled pastries. The woman from Jordan claims ignorance, again foisting the blame on her mother-in-law. "I don't even know how to make these," she pleads.

Because this woman had not been forthcoming about the contents of her bag, officials tell her she's subject to a $300 fine. She begins to weep. They decide to waive the fine this time. She cries more freely, perhaps from relief, fixes her makeup in a window pane's reflection, packs up her remaining victuals and heads to the exit. "We get tears a few times a day," says Richard Barry, an agriculture specialist with US Customs and Border Protection at Logan. "People get very dramatic. These foods are from their home."

In case you've ever wondered where everything goes at the end of the day - when the international terminal at Logan is loaded with forbidden goods - it's not pretty and it's definitely not sentimental. Fresh fruits and vegetables, like the guavas, are inspected for pests and sent down an industrial garbage disposal. Meats are packaged up and sent to Saugus to be burned. It adds up to about 300 pounds of food a week.

The pile might include cured salamis and whole prosciutto (there are plenty of those, say the officers), and slabs of raw meat tucked away in someone's luggage next to socks and toiletries. As the only airport in the country where flights arrive from Cape Verde, islands off the coast of Senegal, Logan disposes of an unusual amount of goat meat.

Barry remembers a recent flight from the islands, where one passenger was traveling with a cooler full of whole fish (fish are permissible under US customs laws). Hidden beneath their silvery bodies was skinned, still-bloody goat meat.

Yams come in from Africa. Not sweet potatoes from Stop & Shop, says Barry, which aren't yams at all. Real yams are big roots and people are willing to wrestle for them. "I've been in a few tugs of war over them," he says.

A Malden resident, a native of Morocco, manages to get through with a suitcase stuffed with a gallon of cured black olives, olive oil, almond oil, and sweet candies made of peanuts and honey. The confections are from her mother.

Another woman off of an Air France flight watches tearfully as a gloved hand rifles through her underwear and blouses and removes every last illegal sausage.

Suitcases on Alitalia flights, which originate in Italy, are considered high risk for the agriculture specialists. Suitcases are often filled with homemade sausages. Officers also watch passengers on SATA airline flights out of Portugal and on planes from El Salvador, because luggage from those countries might contain live crabs.

Ultimately, say the customs officers, there are so many connecting flights from all over the world, just about any of them are bound to turn up something. You will be searched if you declare food in your luggage, if you are chosen at random, or if one of the three food-sniffing dogs at Logan finds you. If one sits down near you, you're busted.

Their names are Apache, Bison, and Hoover and they're probably hungry. But don't feed them, or you're in even more trouble.