Confiscated at Detroit airport: Monkey skulls, bats, infested produce, & bushmeat

DETROIT (FOX 2) - A week ago, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Detroit announces authorities had stopped a shipment of monkey meat in two travelers' bags. But we know that's not the only thing that has been found.

Monkey meat was discovered in someone’s luggage at Detroit Metro Airport and it was the second bust of its kind in recent weeks.

In total, 52 pounds of ‘bushmeat’ was seized from a passenger from Central Africa. As it turns out, it's pretty unusual.

Tyler Fox is an Agriculture Specialist at Customs and Border Protection. He gave FOX 2's Jessica Dupnack an underground tour of all the items that CBP has seized recently. But monkey meat? That's pretty rare.

"So primate by itself is something we see infrequently here," Fox said. "We do see other types of bushmeat such as cane rat and antelope and stuff like that. But primate is one we see seldom so that was a little unusual."

While the meat is rare, CBP agents have seized monkey skulls and at least five were on display.

"This was a tribal leader from the Philippines. Something that was in the luggage that as it went through the x-ray, someone said, that doesn't look right. And then we took a further look," Fox said.

The people who bring them in generally aren't trying to harm the United States.

"Typically it's not malicious," he said. "They're tied to cultures that want to bring something from home, think the tree would look nice in their yard, and don't think about the possible consequences of doing something."

Fox said things like produce, seeds, and plants can be a huge problem to the United States's economy and ecology.

"Typically, it's not people bringing things in because they want to do damage to the economy. It's the action of wanting to bring something from home that inadvertently does that. You know, African giant snails like this, you know, they can do immense damage to crops. You know they've gotten out in Florida before. Females come like a thousand eggs. And this is a small one. I mean, they get larger," Fox said.

As it turns out, that wasn't the only time that snails were brought in. Fox said last July someone brought in 90 snails that were all alive in a suitcase.

Can you bring pre-packaged items into the U.S.?

You might think that buying prepacked meat and goods would be safer. But even those can be a problem.

"We highly regulate pork products and beef products, even if they're vacuum-sealed, things like that, because it doesn't really kill the potential to bring in BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), foot and mouth disease, or African swine fever.

If you have questions and want to know what to bring in, you can find the list at CBP.gov.

How the CBP finds the illegal items

CBP agents couldn't possibly search every suitcase that comes in. At least, the human members of CBP couldn't

Marley, however, is a very good dog and has been traine dot sniff out pretty much anything that's not allowed.

From illegal produce to the monkey meat, Marley can find it all.

"So these dogs are actually trained at a facility by USDA that we go to for a training course. And there they learn basic odors. And when they get back here, they quickly learn to generalize. So they're trained on mango, apple, citrus, stuff like that, but they broaden that into so many other things. Plant material, bushmeat in some cases," Fox said.

While the 52 pounds of monkey meat is a lot, Fox said Marley and dogs like her can sniff out pretty much anything, regardless of the size.

"I know for a fact these dogs can sniff out a single leaf in a suitcase," he said. "Fresh material, they know it, they love it, they want the reward for it, and they're highly trained to do it."

What happens to the seized items?

When CBP confiscates illegal items, they don't just disappear. There's a long process that is done to insure the items cannot harm the environment or introduce something accidentally.

"Our primary thing is we'll look through any fresh material for insects, live insects, something that can be invasive. The meat products, everything gets steam sterilized and that's how it finally gets destroyed," Fox said. "Most of the meat products just get simply disposed of, but the insects, sometimes those will go further on. If it's something that needs further identification, it'll go to the Smithsonian or local USDA, something like that."