Observations Of A Closed Society

Licensing and permitting along with inspection can do no harm to the industry! In fact it can provide much more legitimacy and honesty to the sellers and reassurance to the buyers in some respects.

I am curious exactly what part would be licensed? Ownership? Breeding? A business of a certain size?

In California to be a business and to resell things you must have a state resellers license. This is a $25.00 fee and a 3 week wait. There is a much more detailed permiting system in Florida and that doesn't seem to slow anyone down.

To deter small breeders getting into the game (which is another group that would be out along with some of the small time scammers), you would require a licensing fee of let's say $500. To overcome that initial start up cost (along with all the other legitimate start up costs, for example equipment and marketing materials) your corn snake would cost you $150 each. I believe a large portion of the industry is made up of "little tommy" reptiles (corns, bearded dragons, leopard geckos) that are generally lower in cost. This would go away. Today's "little tommy" is buying high end morphs 5 - 10 years down the road, so it will have a long term effect on higher end animals as well. But by then it will be too late to turn back the hands of regulation.

I would like to see a proactive voluntary association of professional breeders. I believe with bylaws that stress higher breeding and selling conditions that are fairly enforced across the board both in real world (physcial inspections, etc) as well as in promotion (consumer awareness and education) that it would have a tremendous affect on the industry as a whole. With a sliding scale similiar to PIJAC's it would allow both larger facilities and still make room for the backyard breeder that stresses quality. Due to government's inefficiency and inaccuracy I feel the only condition they would have is the fee that would just limited the little guy both legitimate and the scammer. I mean how many $1,000 Het For New Morphs do you have to sell to cover a $1000 license fee when your costs are only $25 for the normal animal that your mislabeling? A voluntary association would not have this issue as most scammers do not look at long term marketing venues which is what the assocation would provide it's members.