Department of Agriculture staff at Dublin Airport have seized 23 tonnes of illegally imported food since February.
The staff, who run a 24-hour surveillance operation designed to keep foot-and-mouth disease out of Ireland, confiscate between two and three tonnes of illegally imported food every month.
Products originating in 106 countries have been seized this year, including soft cheese from Mongolia, hams from Poland, fish from Estonia and smoked beef from Brazil.
The Department's team, under the direction of Mr James W. Egan, superintending veterinary inspector, has found most of the illegally imported food is being carried in passengers' personal luggage rather than as freight.
"Since February last the team has confiscated or people have surrendered 23,050kg of food from 5,433 passengers and has interviewed just over 300,000 passengers. It is vitally important we catch this food on the way through because foot-and-mouth disease came into Britain in food from an aircraft," he said.
"During October, for instance, we confiscated food from 52 countries, and 23 of these, 44 per cent in all, have foot-and-mouth," he explained.
Mr Liam Brennan, a veterinary inspector who works with the airport team, said that among the more exotic recoveries since the system was put in place in March 2001 were monkey meat, the carcass of a gazelle and snake and other unidentified meats.
"The majority of the food we seize is pork, which makes up more than half of what we get here," Mr Brennan said.
He said the average amount of food taken from passengers was around 5kg, and most passengers are unaware that they are not allowed bring in food. "Sometimes people get upset when they have to hand it over," he said.
Mr Egan said people coming back from any EU destination may import food which carries an EU health mark but cannot import any which does not.