CBP's Frontline Defense Against Agriculture Threats

CBP Agriculture Specialist Gustavo Orozco inspects non-manifested animal products including chicken wings and Chinese sausage. CBP photo by Connie Jorgensen. Photo illustration by Frontline staff
 

They number more than 2,800 in the field. They stand sentry at more than 180 U.S. ports of entry – land, air, and sea. They encounter dangerous and potentially deadly substances every day – often armed only with gloves, magnifying glasses, and special training.

They are U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists, or CBPAS, and they are the front line of defense against all kinds of plant pathogens, animal diseases, invasive species and biological threats that could devastate crops, livestock, natural resources and even human health.

Every traveler, every suitcase and backpack, every cargo container, every parcel and letter arriving from foreign locations has the potential to carry these types of contraband – whether that contraband was packed accidentally, concealed purposefully or just “hitchhiking” a ride.  

On any given day, CBPAS encounter more than 3,200 items – plant, meat, animal byproduct, soil – that must be subject to agriculture quarantine. Each traveler could be carrying something that could introduce a plant pathogen or an animal disease that could have a significant impact on American livestock, crops, natural resources and even human health.

The danger could lurk in a seemingly innocuous banana purchased before boarding an international flight. Or it could be hiding in a crate of live birds in the cargo hold. Or it could be an infestation of “flighted spongy moth complex” – formerly known as Asian Gypsy Moth – on the side of a maritime cargo container. Even armed forces vehicles being shipped back from overseas need to be cleaned and disinfected.

In fiscal year 2024, more than 8,000 people received agriculture penalties. That’s a tiny percentage of the total number of passengers that were subject to agriculture inspection – 2.7 million – but the threats are real and the rules are clear.

Travelers need to pay attention. So do importers – and foreign exporters – seeking to get their goods into the U.S. commerce stream.

“One of the biggest challenges I’ve had over my entire career is educating the public,” said Kevin Harriger, former Executive Director of Agriculture Programs and Trade Liaison, or APTL, part of CBP’s Office of Field Operations. Harriger explained that agriculture threats come in all shapes and sizes – from insect pests and biological pathogens invisible to the naked eye to bulk shipments of lumber, animals – dead and alive – to roses being imported for Valentine’s Day.

APTL works with partner government agencies – such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that the customs regulations are as effective and up to date as possible.

For most CBPAS, there is no “typical day” whether inspecting passengers or cargo. “You might think you have a routine, but just wait 30 minutes and you’ve got yourself a new routine. Something else pops up and you have to deal with it,” noted Supervisory CBP Agriculture Specialist Mark Treacy who works at the Port of New York/Newark.

CBP is trying to make it easier for travelers to declare agricultural materials by promoting the free CBP Home™ application for smart phones. Travelers can use the app to seek an inspection for biological materials, pets, and even hunting trophies. Travelers should also report whether they have visited farms or pastures so their shoes can be appropriately disinfected.

Don’t Have a Cow

That visit to a farm or ranch – even a petting zoo – can be a red flag. One major threat is foot and mouth disease, or FMD, a fast-spreading virus that affects “cloven-hooved” animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, deer, bison and antelope.

Foot and mouth disease was first documented in the United States more than 150 years ago. The last outbreak occurred in California in 1929, originating in hogs that had eaten infected meat scraps from a tourist steamship that had transported meat from Argentina.

Foot and mouth disease is not a threat to humans, and although most animals can survive the virus, they are so weakened that they can no longer produce the amount of meat and milk that they could yield prior to contracting the virus.  

Because foot and mouth disease still occurs in many parts of the world, CBP works with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, which is part of the USDA, to screen cargo and travelers to prevent them from bringing products of concern into the United States.

“FMD is one of the seven foreign animal diseases that we try to exclude during inspections," Harriger said. “The livestock industry would be devastated, and swine are particularly susceptible to it.”

Harriger noted that American consumers like consistency in their meat products, explaining that cattle and swine are thus bred to produce those similarities. “As a result, when you’re dealing with herds, when one animal gets FMD the others get it rather quickly,” he said.

Foot and mouth disease can survive for extended periods of time without a “host,” and it can spread rapidly. Foot and mouth disease can be carried in contaminated hay, wheat, straw, grass, manure and soil. It could even be hiding on a traveler’s shoes.

“That’s why we ask travelers if they have visited a farm or ranch,” explained CBPAS Liliana Meneses, who works with Treacy at the Port of Newark. “If they say yes, we will ask them for their footwear and we will disinfect it. They get a free shoeshine, so to speak.”

Another vector for FMD is what is called “regulated garbage.” Harriger explained that CBP has a compliance program at international airports for disposal of the leftover catering on the flight. “Same thing applies at sea – there is certain garbage that you just can’t toss overboard if there is no incinerator, so the compliance program ensures that the waste is handled properly to prevent the introduction of pathogens.”

Foot and mouth disease rarely infects humans, but because it can spread so rapidly among animals, it is a serious threat to U.S. livestock. “There are many ways the virus can enter. It could be contaminated meat or other animal products, but it also could be contaminated cooking, storage or transport equipment,” said Meneses. Leftover food – that “regulated garbage” on arriving commercial aircraft, for example – could conceivably harbor FMD.

On the cargo side, CBPAS review the shipment manifests to discern whether the items meet USDA regulations and whether the proper permits have been obtained. Whether the shipment is a carton of beef bouillon cubes or frozen steaks, it all has to pass inspection at the port.

None of this is lost on U.S. commercial interests. CBP has forged robust connections with associations that represent agriculture interests, such as the Cattleman Beef Association, the Pork Producers Council and others. “We have engaged with them a lot and we encourage them to visit our ports of entry to learn about what we do and why we do it, because we protect their interests,” Harriger said.

For the Birds

Another threat to U.S. agriculture involves a family of viruses that cause H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or HPAI – often simply called the “bird flu.”

Caused by the Influenza A virus, this disease is highly contagious and can be transmitted by wild birds to domestic poultry, pet birds, and even to certain mammals, including humans. Like foot and mouth disease, HPAI viruses typically do not infect humans, but sporadic human infections have been documented.  

Earlier last year, for example, U.S. authorities began investigating cases of the HPAI in dairy cows. The first reported case was in Texas in March 2024; since then, more than a dozen states and more than 700 herds have been affected.

“They’ve found it in foxes, bears, seals and now even cows,” said Gustavo Orozco, a CBPAS at the Port of Long Beach, California. “These zoonotic infections – transmission from one animal species to another – are not frequent, but they do happen. So preventing the disease from getting into the country is key, whether it’s in a test tube or fresh chicken.”

Orozco is on the front line against HPAI. “We’ve intercepted several shipments of frozen and raw poultry coming in from countries we know are affected by HPAI,” Orozco said.  

That’s cargo. But HPAI could be carried in when a traveler shows up at the border with their pet parakeet. Or it could be in a fighting rooster. The virus can continue to live inside the cages that housed these animals.

CBPAS are highly trained in what they do, with many holding undergraduate and even graduate degrees in various scientific disciplines. Orozco, for example, studied biochemistry and microbiology and then worked as a quantitative chemist in private industry before training as a CBPAS.

“In my travels, I’d encounter CBPAS at the airport or at the land border, and I’d hear people ask, ‘Why did you take my apple?’ or ‘Why can’t I bring in lemons?’” Orozco said. “But the more I looked into this job, with my background in science, I understood why it’s so important in terms of protecting our agriculture resources.”   

Un-Palletable

Sometimes the threats are a bit harder to spot. CBPAS – especially in the cargo environment – are concerned about insects that bore into wood and destroy it, often operating undetected and chewing away from the inside out. Many of these pests target trees, threatening our forests and the U.S. lumber industry.

Many are invisible to the naked eye. Fortunately, others, like the Emerald Ash Borer or the Asian Longhorned Beetle, are not. The primary vector for these threats are wood packing materials like pallets and crates.

At the Houston seaport, CBPAS John D. Lopez and CBPAS Nikki Fludd are determined to keep these insects out of the country. It’s a never-ending challenge in the cargo environment, because wood packing materials and wood products are just about everywhere, whether it’s “dunnage” – wood that’s used to brace or hold cargo stable in the shipping process – or the wooden pallets common in warehouses and grocery stores, and on planes, trains and trucks transporting commodities. Plywood and treated lumber are safe. 

Other items of interest are untreated furniture, picture frames, raw lumber for construction, imported trees and even handicrafts like kitchen utensils and holiday decorations like pine cones.

The wooden pallets themselves are supposed to be treated before they can enter the United States. One method is heat and the other is fumigation with methyl bromide.

Each pallet is supposed to bear a stamp indicating that it has been treated for pests. The stamp is a special mark approved under the International Plant Protection Convention in its International Standards of Phytosanitary Measures. Sometimes, unscrupulous exporters will even forge the International Plant Protection Convention mark so their goods aren’t turned around at the port.

“The main pests we encounter at the port of entry in WPM are insects that lay their eggs and mature inside the wood of live trees,” explained Lopez. “If the wood from infested trees aren’t debarked and treated properly, they remain viable inside the WPM that’s used as crating, blocking and bracing with imported shipments. The adults then can emerge from arriving shipments and can be introduced into new environments. These invasive pests could then potentially establish in this new environment and wreak havoc.”

When CBPAS find a pest from one of the eight prohibited families of wood-boring insects, the whole shipment might be re-exported. “Since WPM is used in all varieties of shipments imported into the United States, they can potentially affect any industry from food to tech to oil and gas, Lopez said. Fludd even recalled inspecting a shipment of telephone poles and finding a rare tiny wood boring insect in the wood.

The economy takes a hit when cargo shows up in or on infested wood packing materials. The Houston seaport is the front runner in encountering the wood packing materials arriving in the United States.   

Geographically, Houston’s central location makes it an appealing destination for all kinds of goods that get transported north, east and west. The city also hosts the nation’s largest petrochemical industrial complex, so tons of machinery, parts, vehicles and other materials enter there. Add to that the vast farms and ranches, Texas’s $13 billion timber industry, as well as the military bases, and Texas takes on even more importance for incoming cargo – most of it shipped in or on wood material.

The increased costs of safeguarding and mitigation of infested shipments at the ports is significant and those costs are passed on to the consumer. “Eradication of these pests that have become established in the United States come with price tags in the billions,” Lopez added.

The threat is tiny, often hardly visible to the naked eye – and sometimes not visible at all. While their CBP officer colleagues are armed in the traditional sense, CBPAS are equipped with magnifying glasses, flashlights, penknives, chisels and hammers to inspect the wood packing material. “Those things are our gun belt,” Fludd noted. “Those are the things we need to conduct an efficient, successful WPM inspection.”

But wood packing material pests are not always tiny. Lopez recalled one rare instance of intercepting a member of the Cossidae species, commonly called Carpenter Moths – a highly invasive wood-boring moth.

“The South African species I encountered in vessel dunnage were large, aggressive and very mobile. They crawled from the WPM right up my safety gloves and onto my sleeves,” Lopez remembered. “The caterpillars easily chewed though the thick 5- millimeter plastic bags we use to secure our samples in the lab, meaning they could easily bypass the typical methods we use to safeguard infested cargo shipments. Luckily, it was in dunnage, so the infested material was immediately reloaded into a vessel hold and it was sealed until the vessel left the United States.”

“They are extremely resilient because we find them in all environments, regardless of climate – wet, dry, cold or hot – it doesn’t matter,” Lopez said. So resilient, in fact, that a larva could reside deep within wood that is turned into finished furniture. “They remain dormant inside the material until the right environment presents itself. Can you imagine having a piece of finished furniture and years later a bug will emerge from it?”

Prevention is key, according to Lopez. “Interception and exclusion is relatively easy but once the pest establishes itself, then the USDA has to set up detection and eradication programs and that can take years – all the while the pest is spreading and destroying resources.”

Bio-Threats

CBP agriculture specialists are also on the lookout for other kinds of biological hazards. Unfortunately, many of those threats are even harder to see.

“Defining a ‘biological threat’ is complex, since the term encompasses such a wide variety of material,” according to CBPAS Sarah Palisano, a biological threat operations specialist in Buffalo, New York.

A biological threat is any biological agent that could pose a threat to human, animal and/or plant health. These biological materials include microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and viruses causing FMD and HPAI; genetic materials like DNA, RNA, plasmids, etc. of harmful microorganisms; infected diagnostic specimens such as organs, tissues, blood and bodily fluids; and contaminated/fake human and veterinary pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

Bio-threats also include potential disease hosts – such as mosquitoes, ticks or infected live animals. It can even include “select agents” and toxins, which can be fatal to plants, animals or humans. “It really is a broad umbrella of products – most of which are used for legitimate purposes,” Palisano said.

Palisano recalled that CBPAS in Buffalo encountered a select agent called Hendra virus. This virus, first discovered in Australia in 1994, is borne by flying foxes, also called fruit bats. Accompanied by respiratory and neurological symptoms, the Hendra virus causes a severe and often fatal illness in both horses and humans. Horses typically contract the virus from bat droppings, while humans contract the virus through contact with infected or dead horses.

Hendra has killed 57% of humans who have become infected, and approximately 75% of infected horses have died. A vaccine now exists for horses, but research is ongoing to develop preventions and treatments for human infections. Arriving from a location that Palisano prefers not to disclose, the Hendra virus shipment was destined to a secure United States laboratory for research purposes.

Many importations of biological materials – like vaccines and other pharmaceutical products – are critical to important medical research and life-saving procedures. Confiscation only occurs when proper procedures are not followed or if entry of that material would pose a threat. In those cases, seizures may be necessary to protect the nation.

“Scientists put a lot of time, money and effort into their research [their blood, sweat and tears, so to speak], and they don’t want to leave that material behind,” Palisano added. The traveler or importer may not know or understand the regulations, or they may try to skirt the rules because they don’t see any threat or risk. “It’s important to remember that the regulations are there for a reason, and that intentional or accidental exposures of biologicals have the potential to cause devastating effects that would permeate all aspects of our U.S. agriculture sector and economy.”

“A lot of medical testing, treatment and vaccine research ramped up during COVID, and part of successful research is collaboration – which will naturally involve the safe and lawful transport of pathogenic material,” Palisano said. “Overall, I think COVID was an eye opener for the public – it made everyone realize the real-world implications of these biological risks.”

Hitting the Target

When it comes to intercepting contraband like drugs, weapons and illicit currency, CBP relies on “targeting” to focus on people and cargo that pose the greatest risks – relying on rules based on patterns and trends in previous travel and trade and on intelligence shared with other law enforcement agencies.

Former Director of Agriculture Programs and Trade Liaison’s Agriculture Enforcement & Engagement Nidhi Singla understands the importance of targeting and trains other CBPAS to hit the bullseye.

Singla started her career at the Port of Newark, New Jersey, subsequently becoming an agriculture canine handler before transferring to CBP’s National Targeting Center, or the NTC, where she worked as an enforcement officer.

In 2014, Singla was asked to bring the targeting expertise she developed at the NTC to the agriculture program, where she led the creation of the National Agriculture Cargo Targeting unit – the first of its kind for targeting agriculture threats.

The kind of targeting being conducted at the National Agriculture Cargo Targeting unit is a prime example of how CBP leverages technology to be more effective.

One example is Risk Based Sampling. Risk Based Sampling uses data algorithms from each port of entry to determine inspection rates for certain agricultural commodities.

“The selection of these entities is intensive work. We really want to offer a program where people who are compliant for agriculture regulations are rewarded with lower inspections rates, whereas the shipments from entities that are not compliant are selected for more frequent inspections to ensure a safe supply chain for agriculture products,” Singla said. 

Plant and animal pathogens are not the only hazardous substances that CBP agriculture specialist’s intercept.

CBP has employed an “all threats” training approach since 2018, in which CBPAS are trained to spot other dangers, such as illegal drugs, counterfeit medications, illicit currency, fraudulent documents and smuggled weapons. This all-threats training makes perfect sense, given that more than 75% of baggage inspections are conducted by CBPAS.

Ask any CBP agriculture specialist or officer and they will tell you that drug smugglers will try anything in their quest to bring prohibited items over the border.

CBP agriculture specialists in Atlanta, for example, found three pounds of cocaine hidden in three decorative metal figurines in a bag carried by a traveler arriving from Honduras. At New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, a traveler from Mexico was arrested when CBP agriculture specialists found wooden picture frames containing 14 pounds of cocaine.

In another seizure at JFK, CBPAS X-rayed a bag carried by a food courier arriving from Mexico. They noticed three cylindrical objects on the screen. The objects turned out to be candles, but the CBP agriculture specialists asked CBP officers to insert a probe into one of the candles. When the probe was removed, they found a white powder that tested positive for fentanyl. They seized a total of 2.5 pounds of fentanyl worth approximately 60,000 and enough to kill 500,000.

“The biggest challenge that both CBP and APTL face in general is the ever-changing paradigm of threats,” said Singla. “Sometimes the threats are overt and sometimes the threats more covert, particularly in our arena of agriculture.”   

CBP’s agriculture operations serve “as an important cog within the wheel of CBP overall,” Singla added. “Our mission – to protect the border by preventing the entry of threats to American agriculture, natural resources and human health – work hand in hand with CBP’s mission.”

No Typical Day

CBP agriculture specialists often confront new and sometimes unusual challenges. For example, in 2024, CBPAS at Los Angeles International Airport welcomed two giant pandas on loan from China – the first to enter the United States in 21 years.

The pandas arrived in large metal crates packed with fresh bamboo, fruits and vegetables – the finest in-flight dining for their species. As a result, CBP agriculture specialists were required to enforce agriculture quarantine regulations for plant and animal disease concerns, including the collection of the animal feed and bedding material.

For CBP agriculture specialists, there really is no “typical day.” Every day, every shift, there are new passengers and cargo to inspect – and new potential threats to intercept on America’s front line.