United States border authorities are on the lookout for a new food smuggling racket from Mexico, after customs officials discovered an operation that involved one light truck and 756 pounds of processed sandwich meat.


US Customs and Border Protection officers seized 81 rolls of Mexican bologna on Texas’ Paso Del Norte bridge from Juarez, Mexico. Children were sitting on top of the illegal load stacked like a car seat and covered with a blanket; the real seat had been removed.


It is illegal to carry most fruit and meat into the US from Mexico but there is a lucrative market for the bologna among Mexican Americans, who pay between US$5 and US$10 a roll, (compared with US$1 a roll in Mexico).