Tribune de Geneve, Fre - It was a bad weekend for meat-loving border crossers near Geneva. Customs officials seized more than 120kg of meat at Mategnin (Meyrin) and Vireloup (Collex) during what they called "Operation Jeannot." Twelve agents manned the normally unguarded border posts looking for the meat they know Vaudois and Genevois shoppers buy in France during barbecue season. (See GL's Friday interview and article on getting through Swiss customs safely.)
A 24-year-old financial consultant from Geneva, shopping with his mother, admitted to having about 2.5kg over the limit. The limit is 500kg per person for red meat and 3.5kg for poultry and processed (sausages, for example) meat. The cost? A SFr100 fine and SFr50 customs fee, plus the inconvenience of going to Fernay-Voltaire to pay - and the discomfort of seeing a half-kilometre line of cars pile up while the customs agents check for goods.
The Tribune de Geneve's Fedele Mendicino recounts how the agents, working together by radio and using what they like to call in French their "flair" or second sense, caught one man on a motorbike cutting through the forest, with a large stock of barbecue meat for his World Cup party.
And then there was the economist from Fribourg, driving a black Saab, who was fined SFr500 for a car trunk weighed down by meat. When he decided to take another normally unmanned crossing instead of heading to Fernay Voltaire to pay he ended up with SFr1,300 in total in fines and customs duties. Worse was to come: he didn't have the money to pay, so his meat and his car were seized. (continue reading)→