Our neighboring city to the south, El Paso, had a couple of interesting food-related incidents last week.
On Friday, an 18-wheeler loaded with thousands of gallons of Tabasco sauce in large containers suddenly sprung a leak on Interstate 10 in the central part of the city. The problem was discovered when the truck started spewing a trail of red sauce as it drove down the highway.
The truck pulled over and haz-mat teams were called to try to corral the leaking sauce.
Officials estimate that ab out 100 gallons of the hot sauce escaped from the trailer before the leak was stopped. Traffic was snarled for several hours during the incident.
And over the weekend, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials said they recovered a large cache of cocaine during a routine stop at the Bridge of the Americas. A pickup truck that had crossed into the United States from Mexico was loaded with what appeared to be an innocent looking ice cream maker when authorities decided to examine it a bit more closely. Concealed inside the contraption was 146 pounds of cocaine.
Authorities arrested the driver and confiscated the drugs.
You may recall that I’ve written several stories in past months about confiscation of Mexican bologna at border patrol stops in our region. While officials still insist that confiscating Mexican bologna “is no laughing matter,” we all got a good chuckle out of our government’s intensity in tracking down supplies of encased meat. Luckily, they’re also busy watching out for things that I think are a lot more serious that are being brought across the border.
aero-cordero.com 