Bread, breakfast bar or canned food are allowed to be brought into australia?

Upvote:7

The customs declaration for Australia asks you to declare any of the following products :

6 - Meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, fruit, vegetables?

7 - Grains, seeds, bulbs, straw, nuts, plants, parts of plants, traditional medicines or herbs, wooden articles?

8 - Animals, parts of animals, animal products including equipment, pet food, eggs, biologicals, specimens, birds, fish, insects, shells, bee products?

If your items include any of the above you will need to declare them - including things like nuts in breakfast bars.

Having to declaring items does NOT mean that they are not allowed, it simply means that the customs officer will need to make a determination on whether the item is allowed. Many items containing the above items will be allowed through, although some will not.

Note that there is no risk of any penalty for bringing in any of the above items - as long as you declare them! Even if the item is not allowed in and is confiscated, there is no fine. If you fail to declare them and get caught (and there's a real chance that you will due to Australias use of everything from X-ray to fruit detecting dogs to find disallowed items) then it's likely that you will be fined - so if there's any doubt, be sure to declare!

Upvote:7

Australian Customs are strict, but they also use common sense. In practice, here's the test they apply to everything:

Can the thing you're trying to bring in, or something inside that thing, reproduce and multiply in Australia?

(Note: That's not an official rule or anything, just my interpretation.)

This means that things like raw nuts, raw seeds, raw fruit, raw vegetables, anything with dirt on it, anything that can harbor insects (straw, wood) is banned. Less obviously, anything containing more than 10% dairy or egg will also be banned because of concerns about foot-and-mouth disease. Fresh bread will probably also be rejected, because it may contain mold or other undesirables lurking inside.

By contrast, commercially packaged prepared food is generally allowed, because anything in it is dead and is not about to rise again. So cup noodles, breakfast bars and canned food should all be OK, as are things like shrink-wrapped biscuits.

But as Doc says, the key thing is to simply declare it. If they don't like it, it'll be taken away, but that's far less bad than getting busted trying to smuggle it in and getting slapped with huge fines.

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