The Garlic Squad

The little white bulbs have become such a problem in the EU that a special seminar was held in the Austrian town of Pörtschach, where officials laid out the many devious ways in which unscrupulous traffickers of garlic from China got their wares into the EU illegally.

For fresh garlic from China, the world's largest garlic producer, the EU has an annual quota of 13,000 tons. Above that, the EU slaps an import duty of 9.6 percent on shipments. That doesn't sit well with some producers, who'd rather not pay, so they have come up with a way to evade the charge.

Countries who have preferential trade deals with the EU, there are no restrictions on trade volume and duties don't have to be paid, given that the fresh garlic originates in a country with such a deal. So smugglers simply ship the garlic into a country such as Myanmar, Serbia or Bulgaria, disguise the product's origin, and get out of paying the import duties.

The EU didn't say how widespread the problem is, but said one container with 20 tons of fresh garlic smuggled successfully into the EU could provide a profit of 24,000 euros ($30,170) by evading the import duties.

Another tactic: fresh garlic is sometimes misdeclared as elephant garlic, which just has one clove, and is therefore exempt from import restrictions.

It seems the smugglers' audacity knows no bounds.

But OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud unit, is on the case. Besides conducting the garlic seminar, staff members have extensively analyzed all world trade flows of Chinese garlic and developed new intelligence tools for a more efficient fight against this growing scourge.

"The fight goes on," said OLAF in a statement.