This smuggled bologna won't be making its way into any sandwiches. Photo Courtesy U.S. Customs & Border Protection

Last Friday U.S. Customs agents seized 35 rolls of Mexican bologna—nearly 400 pounds of the pork-based meat product—at the Santa Teresa border crossing, located 20 miles west of downtown El Paso. A 33-year-old resident of Ciudad Juarez had told customs agents he had nothing to declare, but had in fact squirreled away the bologna rolls behind the seat of his 2003 Dodge Ram pickup. Albuquerque’s KOAT News determined that the bologna could make 400 sandwiches, giving it a “street value” of $2,700 dollars.  This is the second-largest seizure of bologna in the El Paso area ever recorded. The largest occurred at the El Paso crossing in November 2003, when 756 pounds of the meat product were confiscated.

Importing bologna is prohibited because it could potentially introduce “foreign animal diseases in the U.S. pork industry,” Grace Gomez, Santa Teresa Port Director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in a news release. “Chimex bologna manufactured in Mexico has been found to foster hog cholera, also known as classical swine fever (CSF), and is a prohibited item under the Federal Meat Inspection Act,” a document from the USDA Office of Criminal Investigations said.

This is, of course, the second illicit meat seizure at the border that has come to our attention this year. On Feb. 27, U.S. Customs and Border protection found 58 pounds of undeclared iguana meat mixed with masa in two ice chests on a bus crossing into Laredo. That haul was valued at $1,560. “This is a substantial amount of iguana meat, well beyond what would be considered as personal use,” Joe Uribe, Acting CBP Port Director, Laredo, said at the time.—Sonia Smith.