What food can you bring through customs?

Cheese. "If it's runny and gooey, we won't let it in," says Janice Mosher, manager of the customer service center for the CBP. But interpretations vary on which cheeses are enterable, and inconsistency abounds. For years, American cheese lovers have exchanged tales of smuggling in young raw-milk cheeses, such as raw-milk Camembert, which is illegal to sell in this country because it has been aged less than 60 days. The raw-milk cheese regulations are the FDA's bailiwick but, at least for the time being, the FDA doesn't care what you bring in for yourself.

"Currently, there are no restrictions on importation of cheeses for personal consumption," writes FDA press officer Michael Herndon in an e-mail.

But the USDA is another matter. The virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, a livestock illness, can persist in high pH (low acid) cheeses, according to Dr. Christopher Robinson, senior staff veterinary medical officer at the National Center for Import and Export, a branch of the USDA. So the USDA frowns on fresh ricotta and cottage cheeses from abroad because they may have high-pH whey added back to them. Also suspect are cheeses "that pour like heavy cream," says Robinson, who mentions mascarpone and Vacherin Mont-d'Or.

In theory, then, only the softest, moistest, runniest cheeses should raise a customs agent's eyebrows. But in the field, agents may operate more cautiously.

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