Scottish pinhead oatmeal has optimal qualities for making haggis, Prof Ferguson explains.
But officials in various countries over the years have had to deal with the exotic and disturbing: a monkey head, bits of ovary and other tissues, strange white powder - even a case full of sheep's heads.
Glasgow-born Prof Ferguson (67), who has both medical and dental training, retired several years ago as professor of oral medicine and oral surgery at the University of Otago's School of Dentistry, but is known by many for hospice movement roles.
While he says he has never volunteered for anything, his work as an honorary clinician in a variety of hospices spans almost 40 years. He provided voluntary palliative care to terminally ill patients with oral conditions.
After decades of involvement with the Otago Community Hospice, he retired from the board late last year to make way for "new blood".
Prof Ferguson has undertaken voluntary work and research in hospices and medical centres overseas, often in countries he calls the "armpits" of the world.
Such trips have been responsible for some of his more unusual travelling companions, although his first clash with customs involved an innocuous box of chocolates.
His parents lived for years in Nigeria and when he was visiting from the United Kingdom as a teen, a customs official said the small box of chocolates for his mother was not allowed.
Confronted with "an excitable person waving a Sten gun", and suspecting the officer wanted the chocolates himself, Prof Ferguson "stood and ate the lot in front of him, while technically I was not yet in his country".
A few years later, as a science student in Scotland, he was taking a piece of ovary from Nigeria to study, but because there was a coup in progress "the plane that I was about to fly out on was having a few incoming people shot". Despite last-minute travel plan changes, fresh dry-ice [frozen CO2] in Brussels ensured the ovary arrived in Britain well preserved.
The monkey head, which he had permission to bring into New Zealand, was part of surgical research he was doing on rhesus monkeys.
Unfortunately, although it was packed in formalin, the bag leaked and " I ended up with my hand luggage consisting of a head plus a litre of monkey juice".
A case full of sheep's heads was part of research he was undertaking with colleagues in Sydney, involving inflicting bony lesions to the cranium and repairing them with titanium structures.
The heads were in Dunedin for analysis, but had to be flown back to Sydney a couple of times.
His luggage contained "only a case full of sheep's heads looking up", a sight and smell which were not favourably appreciated by the officials.
Some strange white powder (lime from coral), part of research he was undertaking on cancer of the mouth and throat, caused consternation when he brought it through Heathrow Airport from Sri Lanka.
That earned him a spell under observation, but all was well - eventually.
A trip to Bangladesh, where he was to teach and run clinics, involved him travelling with a large selection of surgical instruments for the university there - pointed chisels and " a variety of sharp steel".
At a time when luggage was being carefully examined, customs at Singapore "fell about laughing that anybody could be mad enough to carry such a potentially lethal load".
He said they must have seen him as a deranged professor who "couldn't harm a fly and they waved me onwards for the flight to Dhaka".
Coming through a New Zealand airport with samples of advanced tumours from a stint in Fiji where he had undertaken work with patients with leprosy, Prof Ferguson recalls with relish an official saying: "I think you're a disgusting person".
He acknowledged the guidance and support he had received from what he called his "Fairy Godmother" in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, although he said he understood she shuddered when he sent her yet another email headed "New Project".
A recent customs encounter involved him trying to enter New Zealand last year with a container of scorpions and preserved spiders - similar to the fried spiders he had been eating during a stint in Phnom Penh.
While he was there, he worked at two universities teaching dental students the entire oral medicine curriculum as well as developing an oral health care programme for children in a Missionaries of Charity hospice for orphaned children with HIV, which is now established.
Prof Ferguson said he was now not physically fit enough to undertake the type of work he had done in Phnom Penh and his his overseas travel was more likely these days to involve travelling to Sydney to see his two daughters and grandsons. And that's where the oatmeal comes in.
Prof Ferguson has been importing haggis for some years and is allowed to bring in up to 20kg at a time directly from Edinburgh.
He is also becoming a dab hand at producing haggis himself, with the help of Rex Spence, of South Kill Abattoir in Milton, who provides the required sheep's organs.
However, he has found New Zealand oatmeal does not produce a haggis with the correct consistency.
Attempts to bring in pinhead oats from Banff in Scotland foundered when the company there suggested he would need to order a container load.
He eventually found a company in Tasmania importing it and can get it delivered to one of his daughters in Sydney in 3kg packages.
With future babysitting visits to Sydney planned, he or his wife Janet will be able to ensure a regular supply of the essential ingredient.
And what is so special about pinhead oats? They are made from whole grains, steel-cut into pieces, then graded to a coarse size.
- elspeth.mclean@ odt .co.nz
