(Image Source: Boing Boing)
BY HARUMENDHAH HELMY
It’s a hazard to your diet and -- now to national security? One woman is saying a TSA agent confiscated her dangerously delicious red velvet cupcake after deeming its frosting questionable.
“If you think airport security has gotten a little overboard then this is the icing on the cake. Literally. A Massachusetts woman claiming a TSA agent confiscated her cupcake because the frosting was a security risk. It happened at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. The agent said the frosting violated the TSA’s policy against gels...(scoffs).”
The cupcake was packaged in a glass jar with a metal lid -- which attracted the metal detector.
Boston’s WCVB visits the baker who says — there’s no gel in that jar — just your regular ol’ cake, filling and frosting. It also talks to cupcake owner Rebecca Hains -- who says she still can’t believe what happened.
WCVB: “The bakers at Cohasset’s Wicked Good Cupcakes never thought their delights could cause such a disruption.”
Baker: “A diet threat, maybe... [laughs].”
WCVB: “And although the inconvenience spared her a few hundred calories...”
Rebecca Haines: “They stole my cupcake. Maybe he was hungry...”
WCVB: “Rebecca would like an explanation from the TSA.”
Rebecca Haines: “It’s not really about safety. It’s about making people follow rules that really, I think, to the average travelers, seem arbitrary and encroaching on our civil liberties.”
And a writer for conservative blog Hot Air points out another issue with the cupcake confiscation...
“The incident ... underscores an agency-wide flaw, namely the TSA’s wild inconsistency in flagging prohibited items. On [her] outgoing flight from Boston’s Logan International Airport earlier in the week, she was waved through security with two cupcakes in her possession.”
And finally, in a piece for Boing Boing, the cupcake owner pokes fun at the dessert’s inherently dangerous nature.
“CLEARLY [the agent] is in the right, because unbeknownst to him, when I had previously opened one of these marvelous cupcakes on the flight from Boston, everyone’s safety was jeopardized. There was pandemonium among my hunger-crazed fellow travelers: Everybody wanted one.”
The TSA has said the agency is launching an investigation into the matter -- saying cakes and cupcakes are normally always allowed past security checkpoints.
