Food in your suitcase: where the EU draws a hard line

The Commission's personal-imports page explains the severity: "personal goods containing meat, milk or their products brought into the EU continue to present a real threat to animal health" — dangerous pathogens causing foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever can reside in them, and a sandwich in a suitcase is an epidemiological pathway. Hence the ban's shape: meat, milk and derived products from most non-EU origins cannot enter in personal luggage, with checks and confiscation at arrival.

The carve-outs are precise: powdered infant milk, infant food and special foods (or special pet feed) required for medical reasons, under 2 kilograms, provided they need no refrigeration before opening, are packaged proprietary brand products for direct sale, with packaging unbroken unless in current use — plus special-status origins such as the Faeroe Islands and Greenland.

Source: European Commission (food safety), personal imports, read 6 September 2026.

The practical translations: the charcuterie from a US deli, the home-country cheese, the jerky in the carry-on — all confiscation candidates at EU entry from third countries. Plant products run parallel phytosanitary rules with their own certificate logic. Travelling within the EU, by contrast, personal food moves freely — the wall faces outward.

For movers, the household-goods container follows the same outward-facing controls on foodstuffs; the relief covers your furniture, not a pantry of animal products. And pets ride an entirely separate, well-documented regime — the EU pet rulebook.

Losing a salami at customs is a story; losing a visa slot over an insurance certificate is a setback. The files with published standards deserve the planning hours:

Check a policy against the rule