“So why destroy them if they were healthy, and why try to sell them if they were not? “
Government workers are like chess pieces. They can only do certain things. So, the vegies end up in the hands of a bureaucrat whose only authority is to confiscate and destroy. He has no other options and bureaucrats are not allowed to get creative. That would be cause for instant dismissal.
I would imagine that if he ended up with something that was not in the rule book, a live tiger cub, for example, he could get creative and send it to the local zoo. But, that’s about it for creativity.
They get creative all the time. Just sell it, pocket the money, and have your fellow bureaucrat make certificate of destruction for half the proceeds.
I remember once I had a beautiful Japanese steel knife the size of my forearm in my luggage, and going into the central bus station in Jerusalem, they discovered it and confiscated it. But first I had to wait for a cop to come and then I had a choice, either consent to its destruction or go down to the police station and get grilled on why I had such a big knife. I argued and shmargued that it was in my luggage, that it was a wall decoration, that I had bigger knives in my kitchen, but those were the choices, so I consented to its destruction. As I was going through this nonsense, the x-ray machine workers were parading around with the sheathed knife, seeing how they looked with it. I went home. The knife is now decorating a bureaucrat’s wall, but officially it was destroyed.