prohibited food items going into Canada

Heading into Canada, I wouldn't be too concerned. Stay away from exotic fruits and vegetables. For the most part, try to keep the original packaging for everything you're bringing in.

On your way back into the US is where you'll encounter most of your food-related border crossing issues. Basically, no meat, cheese, eggs, fruits (including juice) or vegetables. There are exceptions, but they change weekly and its just not worth keeping up with it.

To tell the truth, the important thing (cost-wise) when crossing the border either way is to bring is condiments (salad dressing, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, butter, etc) in their original containers - things that you'll only be using a little bit of and would be expensive to buy just for the trip.

Years ago, I crossed by boat at Bamfield. A sign at the dock directed us to an address a block up the street for customs. We knocked on the door, and a harried-looking young woman came to the door with a couple of toddlers hanging on her apron. We told her we wanted to clear customs, and she got the forms and asked us all the questions. We were cleared on all items until she came to, "Do you have any potatoes on board?" I said, "Yes, we have a ten pound bag of potatoes." She pondered a minute and then said, "If I were you, I would go back to the boat and make a big potato salad." I told her, "That was my plan from the very start." She handed us the papers and told us to enjoy our stay in Canada. We did.

I cross almost weekly in to the US for shopping. It is now getting that prices on all goods except meat and dairy are pretty similar between the 2 countries.

Coming into Canada the big no-no for food importation is potatoes and blueberries, (yes blueberries). The only time we purchased said contraband in Michigan and tried bring them back to Canada we were directly asked point blank whether we had blueberries.
They were confiscated and I did look up the reasons online and found that a certain bug gets under the skin and is very hard to eradicate if spread. Same with potato bugs.

We cross at least a couple of times a year with our trailer and have done so for many years. We no longer worry about trying to adapt to the rules - and no longer even check to see what the rules are - the practice that allows us to cross in either direction worry free is simply to plan our grocery purchases and our crossing so that we do not have any perishables on board - or at least have minimized the amount we have - then we stock up on the other side. I can only think of twice that we lost something to the food police - once a lime - the other time a couple of steaks - in all our years of crossing these were not items to get stressed about.


Jay

I think the rules change based on what the border patrol folks want for lunch

Mvander wrote:
I think the rules change based on what the border patrol folks want for lunch

Kindly go look!!!!

Yes, questions may be influenced by latest virus or fungus. But dat ain't rules. That's giving priority to volume of probable trouble.

:R

Go figure! We crossed about 3 weeks ago; we were traveling with another couple (in their rig)and they were directly behind us, same lane and same border patrol agent!! He made me dump my potatoes (thankfully I only had a few) and my apples. The couple traveling with us had apples and potatoes...he didn't even ask them. I had a beautiful package of blueberries from Costco but they didn't even ask about blueberries! Just came into Alaska, which is the U.S. ya know...and they didn't ask us about anything ~ fruit, veggies, meat. But the U.S. agent was sure friendly! Nice chap!