Bottles of Honey Shut Down Airport

The suspicious material found inside luggage that shut down Bakersfield's Meadows Field Airport turned out to be five soft drink bottles filled with honey. A routine swabbing of the luggage tested positive for TNT. When the bag was opened authorities found the bottles filled with an amber liquid. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said, "Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles? That itself is an alarm. It's hard to understand."

Comments

Re:The system worked?

[natehoy]

First, I agree that TSA appears to have overreacted, and isn't doing themselves any favors with their ongoing attempt to blame the traveler for doing something that is perfectly legal and probably didn't seem unusual at all to them. Youngblood needs to hold a new press conference and apologize to Ramirez. Not for the initial reaction, but for his "why would anyone take a risk of carrying honey" bullshit as a thinly veiled attempt to blame Ramirez for shutting down the airport.

However, good quality raw honey has a very strong smell, and given that this guy is a farmer he may have liked some local raw honey he found and decided to take some home. Unfortunately, most people I know would not recognize the aroma of raw honey. It can be rather pungent, and to some people unpleasantly so. Once cooked and processed, as it generally is for American consumption, it's a very different product with comparatively little aroma. Much like milk - the pasteurized homogenized stuff you can buy in most places is not nearly the same as raw milk, and raw milk tastes and smells different - it has an earthy flavor and smell to it that is lost in processing. I love both raw milk and raw honey, but they are very different from their processed counterparts. Hell, most people I know wouldn't recognize the COLOR of raw honey. It can be very dark and cloudy, almost opaquely in some cases.

In some states, it's also illegal to sell raw milk and/or raw honey, so Ramirez might have been stocking up while he had a supply available.

Add to that the fact that bees are routinely fogged with smoke during the honey harvesting process. If Ramirez was present for that process and packed those clothes, you can add "smoke" to the strong raw honey smell. That would make a pretty interesting combination of scents even raw honey lovers might not recognize.

The TNT and acetone peroxide swabs could have easily been the result (as mentioned in the article) of the smoke used to fog the bees during the collection process, or a chemical or chemicals used on the farm. A little Diesel fuel, a little ammonium nitrate, a touch of this, a spot of that, get it on the bottles, handle the bottles while loading them in the suitcase, whammo - false positive.

So looking at it from the perspective of a TSA agent, using the "walk a mile in their moccasins" rule:

1. They did a routine swab of luggage, and one bag tested positive for TNT and acetone peroxide. That's enough to certainly merit looking in the suitcase as a next step. They'd be criminally negligent not to look into it further, that's their damned job.

2. They opened the suitcase and were presented with bottles of thick (probably dark) cloudy amber fluid in unmarked Gatorade bottles. From the point of view of a TSA agent who has just gotten a positive test for explosives, this would be reasonably considered "suspicious". I know I'd be concerned enough not to just pack the suitcase back up and send it on its merry way. So they reasonably investigated further.

3. They opened a bottle and were presented with an unfamiliar, strong smell. I know people who do find the smell of raw honey unpleasant, so the strong unknown smell combined with the tension of having a positive explosives test and the odd packaging, I could easily see someone being nauseated by the smell. Next "reasonable person" reaction is certainly not to taste it and discover it's honey!

Their initial reaction sounds very much like the system worked as it should, given the (probably understandable) misinterpretation of the evidence. Youngblood and TSA management seem to be the only ones truly mishandling this situation, by trying to blame Ramirez for what looks like an honest mistake on the TSA's part. It's time to give Ramirez back his honey, apologize, have Obama invite everyone over for a beer, and move on.

The real shame is that it's likely the root cause of this is the simple fact that many people don't know a REAL food when they see and smell it.