Traveller disputes honey fine
A woman returning from Sri Lanka was slapped with a $400 fine from the Ministry for Primary Industries for not declaring a jar of honey, even though she ticked the right box on her arrival card.
Gamage Kariyawasam said the fine was unreasonable because she had been upfront about the items she was carrying, both on her arrival card and by showing them to a customs officer.
She has been trying to get the biosecurity infringement notice overturned but so far had been unsuccessful.
Kariyawasam returned to New Zealand in February after a month on holiday in Sri Lanka, and brought in ‘‘heaps of food’’ and herbal medicines, for which she carried the prescription.
Kariyawasam ticked boxes on her arrival card indicating she was bringing in food, animal products and plant products. But the Ministry for Primary Industry (MPI) said she failed to verbally declare the honey to the first customs officer she spoke with, which resulted in her being served an infringement notice.
‘‘We had heaps of food because we travelled from my home country, and [the officer] was asking what we had. I explained I had herbal medicine, some fish, some dried food. The bee honey was part of that herbal medicine, which is why I didn’t specifically say bee honey,’’ Kariyawasam said.
However, she opened her luggage and showed the next officer the contents of her herbal medicine, which contained the honey. ‘‘That’s when the guy was like, ‘you haven’t actually declared it’.
‘‘I said, no, I have declared it on the form. And the guy was like, ‘did you verbally declare it?’. And I said I mentioned herbal medicine and this was part of it,’’ she said.
The customs officer informed her she had to verbally declare the honey and handed her an infringement notice for $400.
Kariyawasam later checked the MPI website for information about how items should be declared and found no mention of instructions to verbally declare items, only that items should be declared on the arrival card.
‘‘If I was trying to hide something I wouldn’t have opened the herbal medicine and shown them the bee honey,’’ Kariyawasam said.
After spending several months contesting the fine, Kariyawasam received a further $30 court fine from the Ministry of Justice for not paying on time. She said she would pay the fine because she did not want to risk further penalties but would continue to fight the infringement notice
Biosecurity New Zealand northern region passenger manager Craig Hughes said their records showed Kariyawasam did not declare the honey. The list of goods on the arrival card was not exhaustive, but provided a starting point for officers to interact with passengers in order to make a risk assessment, he said.
‘‘In this case, the woman declared food on her card, but did not mention honey when questioned by the officer,’’ Hughes said.
Honey from overseas posed a serious risk to New Zealand’s apiculture industry, because it could contain diseases that had the potential to devastate the bee population, he said.
MPI specialist adviser facilities Howard Hamilton wrote to Kariyawasam in May, after she contested the fine, declining to overturn it. The correspondence states that the offence was one of ‘‘strict liability’’, meaning it was acknowledged that there was no intention to deceive on her part and ‘‘no suggestion of any dishonesty’’. The fine of $400 reflected this.
Fines of up to $100,000 or five years imprisonment could be applied when people deliberately attempted to smuggle risk goods into the country.