Pinoy balikbayans told not to bring daing, salted eggs back to the US

Balikbayans going back to the United States after the holidays are well advised not to pack food like dried fish (daing) and salted egg in their luggage to avoid setting off security alarms.

Or if the exotic foodstuff are indispensable in this post 9-11 scenario, better to handcarry them, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said.

"It’s better to carry food than to pack it," TSA spokesman Robert Johnson told AFP, as he advised travelers to avoid tangles by changing a few habits.

Packing a bag will practically become an art for passengers traveling to or from the United States, as new federal regulations come into force on Jan. 1, 2003.

The new year will herald in mandatory inspections of checked baggage going through all 429 major US airports, stacks of boxes that may include distinctly Filipino food items like fish fry (bagoong), sinigang mix, durian candy, even taro (gabi) leaves that are the main ingredient of the Bicolano dish, laing.

Before being stowed in an airplane’s hold all baggage will, at the very least, have to pass through machines that detect explosives.

These new rules will not only apply to internal US flights, but also all flights originating from and coming into the United States.

"We’re asking that passengers unlock their bags. It is not required but suggested," Johnson said.

Any suspect baggage will be subject to a manual search, and a possible ransacking and spillover of Filipino culinary history.

"When a bag goes through this new high-tech equipment, and we find a problem that we need to resolve, if the bag is locked, we’ll be able to do that quickly.

"If the bag is locked and we can’t reach the passenger in the airport or in the plane before it leaves we’ll either need to break that lock or break the luggage latch. If it does not pass the test and we can’t resolve it, it will not fly," Johnson said.

In the United States, customs and immigration is performed at first point of entry –irrespective of whether the passenger is transiting to another point in the country. Under the new rules, a passenger could find him or herself with broken luggage in Los Angeles which would have to be mended before continuing to New York.