Traveler angry over opened caribou parcels ANCHORAGE (AP) =97 Caribou hunter David Williams is angry about what airport= =20 security did to a bounty of meat he took home from an Alaska adventure.=20 When the Houston, Texas, man arrived home in March he was in for a nasty=20 surprise. When Williams cut open the strapping tape holding shut the first= =20 of two boxes full of carefully handled, carefully packaged caribou roasts,= =20 steaks and burger, he found a mess inside and a preprinted form informing=20 him his airline baggage had been "inspected." The inspection involved slicing open 45 packages of caribou double-wrapped= =20 in freezer paper and marked "roast," "backstrap" and "caribou hamburger."=20 "This baggage inspection was not done in my presence," he said. "Therefore= =20 I don't know if the meat was stacked on the floor during the 'prohibited=20 item search.' He also wants to know if it was swabbed by chemicals for=20 explosive detection, or did any bomb-sniffing dogs lick it. He wonders if=20 inspectors had on new, previously unused rubber latex gloves while handling= =20 the meat. "The value of this caribou meat is about $28 per pound, and we=20 are afraid to eat it. Would you eat it?" he asks. Williams said appeals to= =20 the airlines that hauled the meat brought no response. U.S. Transportation= =20 Security Administration Alaska director Ken Jarman on Friday said he had=20 only recently heard about what happened and begun investigating. He said=20 he's almost as shocked as Williams at what happened. "I'm a hunter and fisherman, too," Jarman said. Cutting open packaged game= =20 meat or fish is against both TSA policy and procedure, he said. Baggage=20 inspectors on the X-ray line in Anchorage aren't even allowed to slice=20 packages open if the alarm goes off on a bag there, he said. And in Kenai,= =20 where there is no X-ray, baggage checkers hand-inspecting bags are supposed= =20 to pass fish and game meat =97 not cut it up. "I feel badly about this,"=20 Jarman said. "It is under investigation. We are looking into it." He also=20 offered assurances to the many anglers now beginning to ship fish south=20 from Alaska that they shouldn't have to worry about the sort of bad=20 experience endured by Williams. Williams suspects the meat-slashing took=20 place at the Kenai airport, where he first boarded a commercial flight upon= =20 returning from a caribou hunt in the Iliamna area. He was participating in= =20 a special winter hunt the state Board of Game established several years ago= =20 to try to trim the growing Mulchatna caribou herd before it overtaxes its=20 range. Williams said he was glad to have the opportunity. Going to Alaska=20 to hunt and fish, he said, "is my favorite thing to do. I don't bowl. I=20 don't play golf. We usually go up in June and again in July. I went up=20 early to get a caribou." *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.natalielaughlin.com/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************