Honey Shuts down Flight

Saw a quick blurb on HLN this morning about a man carrying Honey in his suitcase being detained and causing an airport to be closed in California.

On the news the speaker said that they got positive tests for TNT or TATP (organic explosive compound), and that finding several soda (Gatorade) bottles filled with an amber liqud put them on alert - he said that the contents made the testers nauseous.

Honey? Maybe a little too sweet for them or something?

I just find the whole thing very odd. Apparently the test was done on his suitcase first as routine and it was only after that when they discovered these bottles full of honey that gave off an odor that made them feel ill. What's up with this? Something just doesn't sound right to me. I don't know why, it's just weird.

So when I looked up that story, I saw that another incident happened in Minneapolis that resulted in evacuations. A bomb sniffing dog hit on a piece of luggage but it turned out to be like a dummy bag that staff put on the belt to indicate that all of the luggage has now been removed from the aircraft, a signal bag. Further checking showed nothing was amiss with the bag. Why did the dog hit on it then? How many mistakes and 'false' positives are being found?

Is granny going to put on too much bengay one day and end up closing down an airport? I would like to know what other things can cause false positive tests like in Bakersfield and Minneapolis. How often is this going to have to happen in the quest to keep explosives and extremists off our planes? But no one wants to go ahead with profiling --- cos that would be politically incorrect. Fine - but apparently it's not politically incorrect to shut down 2 airports on the same day for false positives on an empty suitcase that is actually part of the airport's own system and honey.

I must admit that I would have been on alert seeing those strange bottles full of honey. And I would probably wonder if it was some sort of strange trial-run to see if I would get caught.