Motorists and truck drivers entering the US from Canada are being hit with $300 fines and having their lunches seized because they attempted to bring a slice of bologna across the border.

"It doesn't make sense that someone can't take their lunch across the border," Mark Seymour, president of trucking company Kriska Transportation told the Globe and Mail newspaper. "It's food, and if it wasn't safe, they wouldn't be eating it."

Beginning March 1, 2007. the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Inspection Service will also impose taxes on all Canadians entering the US to pay for increased agricultural inspections. Truckers will pay $10.25 each crossing, or $5.25 if they install an electronic tracking device. In 2004, inspectors confiscated 1.5 million items at the border, often using specially trained beagles to sniff for prohibited food.