Airport authorities seize box of giraffe faeces that woman wanted to turn into necklace
Customs officials have seized a box of giraffe poo brought into the country by a woman who apparently wanted to turn it into jewellery.
US Customs and Border Protection said the bizarre seizure occurred last Friday at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport in the state of Minnesota.
The woman is understood to have declared the small box of faeces after being selected to have her belongings selected not long after arrival.
She reportedly said she’d collected the sample while on a trip to Kenya, and had returned with it in her luggage intending to turn it into a necklace.
A native of Iowa, the woman is further understood to have claimed she’d previously succeeded at beautifying a sample of moose dung in the same way.
Agriculture specialists with US Customs and Border Protection reportedly destroyed the giraffe faeces after it was seized.
LaFonda D Sutton-Burke, a field director with the agency, said: ‘There is a real danger with bringing faecal matter into the US.
‘If this person had entered the US and had not declared these items, there is a high possibility a person could have contracted a disease from this jewellery and developed serious health issues.’
Among the health risks associated with handling animal faeces sourced from Kenya, cited by customs officials, are African swine fever, classical swine fever, Newcastle disease, foot-and-mouth disease and swine vesicular disease.
It’s not the only case of air travel-related faecal mishaps to have made headlines.
Two years ago, a man in Windsor found himself covered in poo after a plane ‘dumped’ its waste contents all over his garden.
Back in 2018, a man was detained in Delhi International Airport with what appeared to be a sachet of human excreta, and which turned out to in fact be gold paste worth approximately £17,000.
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