Customs K9 sniffs out dried monkey remains in bag at Boston Logan Airport

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A U.S. Customs and Border Protection K9 named Buddey sniffed out dehydrated monkey remains in a traveler's bag at Boston's Logan Airport, the CBP announced Friday.

The traveler arrived on a Delta Airlines flight from the Democratic Republic of Congo on Jan. 8. During a preliminary baggage screening, Buddey drew attention to a particular bag.

When questioned by CBP, the traveler said it was "dried fish," and that's how it looked on the X-ray screen, the agency said in a press release.

But when agents opened the bag, they found the "dead and dehydrated bodies" of four monkeys -- referred to as "bushmeat," which is raw or minimally processed wild animal meat. It comes from a variety of wild animals, including bats and primates.

It is often smoked, dried or salted, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that treatment doesn't render it noninfectious.

Bushmeat is not allowed into the United States because of the risk it may carry communicable diseases, including the Ebola virus.

CBP destroyed the luggage from the Boston discovery on the advice of the CDC, to "ensure if the luggage was contaminated with any virus it would be halted," CBP spokesman Ryan Brissette told UPI in an email.

"The potential dangers posed by bringing bushmeat into the United States are real," Julio Caravia, area port director of CBP in Boston, said in the release.

Changes in the trade of bushmeat signal an erosion of "cultural taboos" on the killing and consumption of monkeys and other wild animals in parts of Africa.

In 2003, an African environment minister said the rate at which Africa was killing and eating wildlife was unsustainable. Some zoologists said the bushmeat trade was so important to people's survival that it would be better to try to control it rather than stamp it out.

But in 2020, researchers identified a visible shift in the bushmeat trade of several species -- which present a variety of risks including diseases that jump between wildlife, people and livestock -- in and around Niger National Park in Guinea, West Africa.

"The international trade in wildlife is one of the major threats to biodiversity," Tatyana Humle, professor of ecology and conservation at the University of Kent in Britain, told UPI in 2020.

Bringing bushmeat into the United States carries a $250,000 penalty. Brissette said the Boston traveler was not charged and their identity was not released.