Six People Have Been Charged for Smuggling Goose and Duck Organs to N.Y.C. Restaurants

Tori Latham
·2 min read

In Szechuan cuisine, duck and goose intestines are considered a delicacy. Such organ meat is harder to find in the States, but one illegal smuggling operation recently tried to change that.

On Tuesday, six people were arrested for smuggling raw duck and goose intestines from China, through Los Angeles, and to New York, The New York Times reported. The contraband—hidden in mislabeled crates or under other goods—was headed to shops and restaurants throughout the city.

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According to a complaint filed in federal district court in Brooklyn and viewed by the Times, several thousand pounds of illegal duck and goose intestines were discovered by investigators. Along with that, authorities found almost 400 pounds of pork, poultry, and beef in a van parked outside the home of two of the defendants, the prosecutor Kamil Ammari said in court. The charges against all six people encompass the smuggling of organs through L.A. from August 2022 to May 2023, with the complaint also mentioning shipments from as recently as January.

Generally, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service controls the meat and poultry trade to ensure the safety of animal products. According to the complaint, the only relevant Chinese imports allowed are catfish and “heat-treated/cooked” poultry products.

In this instance of the illegal trade, the unnamed “originators” were based in California and China, working with “transporters” who would get the meat to New York. Prosecutors charge that some of these transporters and others then sold the items to wholesalers and direct consumers. Of the six people charged this week, two ran the operation that imported, transported, and sold the intestines; two were wholesalers; and two others transported the goods. All of them were released on bond after appearing before a magistrate judge in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

Schemes involving illicit food have become somewhat common in the past few years: Last year, California’s crops were ravaged by fruit flies that had come to the United States in illegal shipments of exotic fruit. And the year prior, authorities busted a black-market caviar ring in California. It goes to show that people will go to some rather extreme lengths to get their hands on culinary delicacies that aren’t terribly abundant in America.

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