[biztos]

If hams are fungible from a customs point of view (why would they not be?) you could try pre-curing the hams and have them ready just across the border. Ham in, ham out, ham in again, no extra trip to Spain required.

Then you sell the uncured hams you needed for the stamps to a pet-food factory or for German “salami” or whatever.

[Someone]

They possibly need to be cured in Spain so that they can be called Spanish (e.g. Serrano or Ibérico).

And I guess they aren’t fungible because they get tested for health reasons and protein content.

In the EU, tracking is needed. If people get ill from eating ham, it’s important to exactly know where the meat came from (factory, farm, sometimes even the specific pig. Conversely, if animals get ill, it’s important to know where their milk went. https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/traces_en)

[biztos]

They would be cured in Spain! Before coming up to the border.

However, you have reminded me that indeed this would probably not work because of all the tracking required to prevent the Mad Swine Pox and so on.

[kgwgk]

What do you mean?

a) You bring two sets of high quality hams from Spain, one cured and the other raw

b) You cross the border in and out with the raw hams, and tell the customs clerk "I'll come back the processed product"

c) You cross the border again with the cured hams "that was quick, eh?"

d) You dispose of the raw hams selling them at a high discount on a roadside stand

I guess you can do it even more efficiently changing slightly the first two steps:

a) You bring a thousand cured hams and a single raw ham

b) You cross the border in and out a thousand times with the (only) raw ham you have

That improves the economics of the scheme, but makes it look even more fishy.

[biztos]

a) Yes, but raw is not so high quality.

b) Yes

c) Yes but if the hams are fungible, which the other commenter explained they are not, then doing this at volume would make the timing irrelevant.

d) Yes, or just pre-sell them to someplace that doesn't care about quality. Just has to be inside the EU since these are the hams that (you say) have not yet been to Norway!

Crossing the border a thousand times, carrying a ham each way each time, would probably be less efficient, unless you get tax breaks for your hourly employees, in which case you could also have a thousand employees on standby and do it relay-style.

While it's true that this would never work, and if you tried it'd be extremely fishy, I do in fact know a place you can buy pork sausage that tastes of fish.

Sometimes the absurd is possible!

[epse]

That sure sounds like fraud and lying to customs officers, a bit like saying you import cheap Chinese tablets and instead you import WACOM cintiq drawing tablets worth thousands