By Liv Casben in Sydney

A live toad and human bones were among the items seized from international travellers at Australia’s airports last year.

Little is known of what fate awaited the toad before it was seized at Sydney Airport but it was one of almost 400,000 items intercepted across the country’s international terminals in 2023.

Other discoveries included a slug, a frog in a plastic bag, a whole banana tree complete with root system and soil, dried duck kidneys and cobras in rice wine.

Holy water from the Ganges was another of the more notable attempted imports, and was one of almost 200 biosecurity risks identified at Canberra airport.

But Sydney and Melbourne had the bulk of the interceptions, with 236,000 items stopped.

“Nearly 500 tonnes of biosecurity risk material were intercepted across our airports in 2023 with commonly encountered items including beef, rice, pork, seeds, mixed herbs, spices and chillies” Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said.

Senator Watt said biosecurity teams screened over 7.5 million passengers at the country’s international airports and intercepted 393,000 biosecurity risk items.

“There were also many unusual items including human bones, tropical fish, hatching eggs, scorpions, frogs, dried caterpillars, bottles of rice wine with cobras in them, dried duck kidneys, birds’ nests, canned pork liver spread and chicken intestines.”

“These items could have been carrying exotic pests and diseases,” he said.

Biosecurity detector dogs screened more than 806,000 passengers and intercepted more than 32,000 biosecurity risk items.

Biosecurity teams carried out nearly 17,000 inspections and managed 19,796 vessel arrivals at 107 international seaports.

Almost 22,000 international travellers over the past four received an infringement for breaching biosecurity rules, including not declaring items, while 22 visitors had their visa cancelled on biosecurity grounds.