Policy on taking food off the ship

[donaldsgal]

I thought I remembered reading that no food can be taken from the ship onto St. Thomas/ St. John on the 7-night Eastern.

Is this right? If so, does anyone know the rationale for this? I understand it would be a customs thing, but I'm not sure why they'd care about taking food off. I certainly understand about bringing food on.

Anyways, can anyone answer this for me? We are doing St. John on our own and wanted to take room service sandwiches with us to the beach.

Thanks.

 

[videogal1]

I thought I remembered reading that no food can be taken from the ship onto St. Thomas/ St. John on the 7-night Eastern.

Is this right? If so, does anyone know the rationale for this? I understand it would be a customs thing, but I'm not sure why they'd care about taking food off. I certainly understand about bringing food on.

Anyways, can anyone answer this for me? We are doing St. John on our own and wanted to take room service sandwiches with us to the beach.

Thanks.

It could be an agricultural quarantine thing. You should see the paperwork required for taking a service dog off the ship...

 

[dairyou]

We took room service sandwiches off the ship at St. Thomas...Whoops!

Didn't know it wasn't okay. I thought it was another wonderful tip off the DisBoards...

We even walked off the ship with our little cooler..

Deb

 

[DIS NURSE]

Does someone ever truly check your bags/backpacks for such food items? Just curious because we too had planned on taking a few snacks with us....just enough to get by and not trying to break any rules or anything. I would totally respect any agricultural/disease issues.

 

[Hgomes]

I remember turning over a banana I had in my bag when getting off the ship for either St Marteen or St John. I remember I asked and they said to leave it. Don't know if it was because we had been to a foreign port and were going to a US port or the other way around.

 

[aprilgail2]

Well I wasn't aware of that either...we had room service bring sandwiches and ate them at Megans Bay....

 

[kcashner]

US Department of Agriculture policy forbids bringing into the US any fruit or unprocessed food of plant or animal origin without going thru all the necessary inspections and paperwork for importation. The official reason is to be sure that no diseases are spread from other countries which could affect our food supply. THese are very old laws--not associated with 9/11.

Since a banana is an unprocessed fruit, it can't come off the ship and onto US territory. (St. Thomas is US Virgin Islands). You also can't bring it back into the US at Port Canaveral...there are signs in the port area telling you to drop any fruit in the box or face a stiff fine.

You also can't bring in a seashell that you find on the beach (unprocessed animal product), but can bring in one that you buy in a gift shop because it has been sterilized.

Each foreign port has it's own regulations. US regs do allow processed food to come in.