When it comes to garlic producers, there’s no country that’s even in China’s league.  If you combined all the other garlic producing countries up, they couldn’t even touch China, which produces an incredible 75 percent of the world’s garlic.  That makes China the world’s largest exporter of garlic, since there’s no way they can eat all of that (after all, they’re not Italy).  Given the glut of garlic, China’s taken to some interesting measures to move it internationally, and given that the European Union has a 9.6 percent tax on all garlic imports, that interesting method is smuggling.  Recently, a driver traveling from Norway to Sweden was busted with 28 TONS of illegal garlic.

Why Norway and Sweden?  Well, Norway has no garlic tax and is not a member of the EU.  Sweden is a member of the EU, but is right next door to Norway.  Hence, the border between Sweden and Norway is the Spice Road of garlic smuggling.  “The interception of the lorry was the result of a carefully prepared initiative coordinated by OLAF,” or European Anti-Fraud Office, the EU said in a statement. “This action came about due to the excellent cooperation provided by Norwegian and Swedish customs.”

Officials plan to have a really big stir-fry to get rid of all the illegal garlic.  Moldova’s bringing the onions!

Tags: unusual crimes, unusual smuggling, driver busted with 28 tons of garlic, garlic smuggling, OLAF, Sweden, Norway, European Union, Chinese garlic smuggling, unusual cargo, European Anti-Fraud Office, food smuggling

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