Originally Posted by
studentff
Where's the common sense in these agents? When they realized that a flight-full of people have undeclared fruit at a much greater than normal rate, why not make use of the PA with an announcement to warn all the pax that are still in line? "All pax from flight XX please double-check that you do not have any fruit given to you by the airline; apparently a snack bag containing fruit was handed out just before landing."
Did they really have to create the holdup of fining all of those people? Sounds like a revenue generation tactic to me, much like speed traps.
Of course, the irony is that even with this stupidity, the politeness level is infinitely better than reported treatment by US CBP of returning citizens who do not have any contraband but get secondary search, interrogation, laptop confiscation, etc.
It isn't about revenue generation. The fine for undeclared food is to encourage people to declare or dispose of food. If there was no fine then why would anyone declare food? Then there would be a greater chance of food getting through (with the pests and diseases that they are really trying to stop).
If you declare food you do not get fined (the food may or may not get confiscated depending on what it is), and unlike USA you can even change your form at the last minute (even when you pass the big signs or seeing the person in front get asked about their food detected in the xray).