My Pig-Mania Coverage For Bon Appetit Magazine

Pigs always make customs officer Chris R. Richards’s blood run cold.

He can confiscate bush meat, $5,000 bird nests—even grave dirt—without much drama. But anything involving pork tends to get heated…and to skid quickly toward combustion.

“Take away their ham, and people shout, bang the table, and throw things,” says Richards, a supervisory agriculture specialist at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Seattle field office, covering people coming into the country from Washington’s coast to the northeastern tip of Minnesota. “One Spanish lady put a hex on me that my stomach would rot out.”

He shrugs and pats his uniform’s shirtfront. “No ulcers so far.”

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