Originally Posted by
Fornebufox
It's not just which country at a given time, but which part of the country. The one time I had a can of foie gras confiscated was during a bird flu outbreak in France. The agriculture officer spent several minutes showing me the memo which enumerated which areas of France were infected. It wasn't possible to determine from the label exactly where the foie gras was from, so he erred on the side of caution.
At least I didn't get fined, as I had declared what I was bringing in.
And you need a PhD to sort through the regulations. France is OK on most of them, but there is one related to Horse Diseases where they fail. This in turn directs you to another regulation about this particular issue and so on. Does a problem with horses only affect horse meat, or is my Foie Gras a problem because of the horse issue. Who can tell quickly! Far easier for the officer to err on the side of caution and not allow it in. I'd be very surprised if anyone would ever be fined for trying to take in something that was borderline if properly declared.