Pirate, a trainee detector dog for the Australia Border Force, recently put his sniffing skills to good use, discovering 80kgs of illicit tobacco hidden in air cargo in Victoria.
During inspection of air cargo that had arrived into Melbourne airport, Pirate stopped at a certain container, indicating the presence of tobacco.
An x-ray of the cargo failed to pick up any consistencies – a physical examination of the product confirmed that there were four boxes of air filters inside. The filters were heavier than usual and smelled faintly of tobacco. Australian Border Force (ABF) officers then deconstructed the air filters, with the discovery of 80kgs of processed tobacco following.
80kgs of smuggled processed tobacco represents a total of AUD50,000 in revenue which would have been evaded.
Commander ABF College Terry Wall said this detection showed the value of detector dogs as part of the ABF’s multi-pronged approach to stopping illicit goods at the border.
“The ABF is focussed on halting the flow of illicit tobacco into Australia, and Pirate here is an important part of that,” Commander Wall said.
“He is one of four ABF detector dogs currently undergoing training to detect tobacco, and as you can see from this seizure, he’s already showing great ability.”
At the completion of their training ABF detector dogs are deployed at airports, cargo examination facilities and mail centres across the country to detect illegally imported tobacco, narcotics and currency.
Source and image credit: abf.gov.au
