Here Is What Happens To All Your Confiscated Food At The Airport

If you think you can just stroll into an airport with a duffle bag full of tamales from Mexico, or exotic fruit from Guatemala, you’re going to be in for a very rude surprise.

There are only a handful of foods that can be legally transported through US airplanes, and the foods that don’t make the cut go straight into a grinder, never to be seen again.

Great Big Story shows this process, taking a behind-the-scenes look at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s foreign food confiscation process.

Surprisingly, the food isn’t necessarily confiscated because you can get a pretty gnarly stomach ache, it is actually prohibited because it can harm plants and animals in the US.

On a daily basis, JFK has to dispose between 400 and 600 pounds of foreign food using a powerful food destroyer, menacingly called “The Grinder.”

Check out the vid below to see the journey of food destruction: