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Just clarifying a detail about the Lacey Act and it's application to the correct labeling of wildlife shipments.
The legal or illegal status of wildlife in interstate transport does not have anything to do with the labeling requirement under the Lacey Act. Correct labeling is required on every wildlife shipment. From one of the links provided the following statement identifies the labeling requirement:
"The Lacey Act also makes it illegal to mislabel wildlife shipments, bring injurious species into the country, and import live wildlife under inhumane conditions."
Correct labeling required under the Lacey Act is:
1) Common Name
2) Scientific Name
3) Total number of each type
The above requirement for any interstate wildlife shipment can be verified by any U.S. Fish and Wildlife field office.
Additionally, because the overnight shippers such as Fed-Ex, UPS, and Airborne Express have specific requirements about contents labeling, mislabeling begins to infringe on indivdual state statutory transportation regulations that again would be a violation of the Lacey Act in interstate transport.
So, just make sure every box is labeled correctly. It avoids any Lacey Act problems. Then it is just whether the overnight carrier will accept the box. But, much better that than this:
"However, the Criminal Fines Improvement Act of 1987 increased the fines under the Lacey Act for misdemeanors to a maximum of $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for organizations. Maximum fines for felonies were increased to $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for organizations."
The complete solution to the shipping question is to become a known / verified shipper with at least 2 major airlines, the best being Delta and Continental. The way to accomplish this is to open an air cargo shipping account with these two carriers. It will take some time because of the 9/11/2001 implications, but it can be done.
Steve Osborne
PROFESSIONAL BREEDERS
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