Luckily, you don’t have to check those boxes of cake in your pantry. This isn’t a food recall, but a discovery at customs. A few weeks ago customs agents at Cologne Bonn airport found about 1,500 tarantulas stuffed into cakes boxes.
According to Jens Ahland, press spokesperson for the Cologne Main Customs Office, it was the smell of the boxes that prompted them to be opened.
“My colleagues at the airport are regularly surprised by the contents of prohibited packages from all over the world, but the discovery of around 1,500 small plastic containers containing young tarantulas in this package left even the most experienced among them speechless,” Ahland said in a press release.
Some of the tarantulas didn’t survive the trip, which violates animal welfare regulations. While he said it was an “extraordinary seizure,” they’re saddened by “what some people do to animals purely for profit.”
Maja Ley, a spokesperson for the Cologne Main Customs Office, told the Washington Post that adult tarantulas can be traded online for hundreds of dollars, although they were unsure of a specific value for the 1,500 spiders that were found.
Ley said that the tarantulas that were alive were handed over to professional care.
The cake boxes were sent from Vietnam to a recipient in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is in the Sauerland region of Germany. Because the animals weren’t declared to customs and import duties weren’t paid, criminal proceedings against the recipient are in progress.
