Official Luthiers Forum!

This topic is yet more evidence that the late Douglas Adams, (bless his sole) possessed greater insight into what makes modern society tick than any before him, or since he caught his ride to the Bistro Illegal to sip upon Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters and watch as things unfold in ways that never fail to leave the rest of us wondering....why?

“In the past, people would stare into the fire for hours when they wanted to think. Or stare at the sea. The endless dancing shapes and patterns would reach far deeper into our minds than we could manage by reason and logic. You see, logic can only proceed from the premises and assumptions we already make, so we just drive round and round in little circles like little clockwork cars. We need dancing shapes to lift us and carry us, but they’re harder to find these days. You can’t stare into a radiator. You can’t stare in the sea. Well, you can, but it’s covered with plastic bottles and used condoms, so you just sit there getting cross. All we have to stare into is the white noise. The stuff we sometimes call information, but which is really just a babble rising in the air.” “Logic comes afterwards. It’s how we retrace our steps. It’s being wise after the event. Before the event you have to be very silly.” : Douglas Adams 1952 -2001

Cheers

Kim

Greetings.

Does the Lacey act apply only to selling and exporting? What about US artists touring outside the US? Will solo classical guitarists be forced to cancel tours because they can't take their ebony fingerboard outside US borders?

Disturbing.

Regards,
-0.9

The Lacy act and CITES applies to anyone/anything traveling across borders that contains any of the materials covered in these pieces of legislation.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Does the Lacey Act apply to personal items carried in baggage for non CITES species??

Ebony is not a CITES species.

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Lance Peck

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that Lacey applied to 'commercial shipments' and that personal property was exempt. Would like clarity on that....

I'd like some clarity on that too. I just installed some mop dots on a friends guitar. She travels back and forth to Canada. Should I drill out the dots so that she can cross the border with her guitar?

I should clarify that this is my understanding. John Thomas ( law professor quoted in one of the articals on the Gibson raid) spoke on the CITES/ Lace act at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival, he said he now travels with a composite guitar just to avoid any potential problems associated with this.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

John also emphasized a point that has been made by Chuck and others. You don't have to have illegal material. They can question anything and in the case of international borders, they can confiscate it and the burden of proof is on you.

But even though John said he only travels with his composite guitar, he also said confiscations and other problems are extremely rare. My personal take on it is, at this point, the risk of problems is still tiny compared to the other risks of traveling with an instrument. Where flying or shipping is concerned, I bet you are still about 100 times more likely to lose a guitar to theft or damage than to over-zealous customs agents. That's just opinion though.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

I totally agree with Kent, I think the risk is small, but as john pointed out, it can happen.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Does anyone know where you can see a list of any wood species that are involved in any way, without having to read through 300 pages. I recently spoke with a moulding supplier I used to buy from when I had a frame shop and he said that they are no longer selling purpleheart because it is on the list. That's the first I heard that. And then I thought I saw Spanish Cedar on there. Does that mean that every classical guitar with a Spanish Cedar neck can't travel to Canada without documentation? Makes me want to just quit building.

This is the issue that can cause so much confusion . CITIES is the treaty for endangered species flora or fauna . Lacey is about laws from another country that must be upheld here.
As for LMI supplying records , They should be with the shipment of the imported wood . If I can't get my paperwork at this point I can't buy the wood as I understand it . Businesses are held to a different standard of compliance . This is my understanding of any imported wood. I believe domestic species are ok.
Chuck may correct me on this .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

The Lacey Act is not really about upholding laws from another country. It simply says that all wood must be obtained without breaking any laws anywhere in the world. It does not try to enforce other countries laws but rather uses them to verify that the wood in question was legally sourced. I'm not sure but I think there is a USA law that requires US Citizens to obey other countries laws when they are in that country?



No. Businesses and individuals must both obey the law equally. Anyone importing wood into the USA must have a permit and file Lacey documents. In fact when a business obtains an import permit the permit is actually issued to a "person".



The Lacey Act applies to domestic species as well.

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Lance Peck

There is a list of CITES species eaisly found online. The only wood species of concern with a finished guitar is BRW because it is Cites1.
Some species of Spanish Cedar are listed on CITES but not CITES1 so as a finished product they are not subject to CITES control.
Purpleheart is not on the CITES list, they still use it to make pallets in SA.

There is no list of species covered by the Lacey Act because it applies to all species.

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Lance Peck

Hi Ed and Everyone,

Ed, I remember our conversation at GAL, though I don't recall a blunt refusal to respond. Our conversation might not have ended with a firm "ah ha!" -but this seems to be the case with all things Lacey, unfortunately. I do feel that LMI is quite upfront about our Lacey Act Policy (BTW, My sign at GAL and our conversation was about the Lacey act, not CITES. You are mistaken about this point. CITES and Lacey are quite separate). I invite anyone to call or write about our Lacey Act Compliance Program. My door is open.

Do we "spot check" our supplier’s records? No we don't -for the same reason we do not allow our customers to check our records. These records would reveal proprietary information about our sources and suppliers. We do not expect our suppliers to tell us who their valued sources are, so we have them under contract to do so IF we should ever come under investigation for a wood they sold us. We offer the same for our customers. Anyone who requests a signed agreement to this affect is welcome to write to me and request one.

Isn't a signed contract enough? Handling this otherwise would be tremendously expensive. We've had officials tell us the only way to be 100% sure that your supply chain is clean is to walk into the forest with the woodcutter himself! Obviously recouping these costs would add tremendously to your wood's price tag!! So beside a series of rigid requirements and questioning, the contract is the best we can do and still maintain a normal business. That being said, if we get reports of a vendor being suspicious, we do investigate them as best we can.

For the record, LMI has never knowingly imported illegal woods. Ordering from an established outfit like ours shows that you purchase wood responsibly. Still our Lacey Act assurances (in the document referred to above) only cover those woods that we purchased after our program began (4/10).

The Lacey Act requires that you apply "due diligence" to scrutinize your suppliers but does not define this specifically. Showing that, in the light of present day Lacey act concerns, you have made a systematic change in how you purchase woods will do a great deal in demonstrating your good intentions, and if need be, may exonerate your legacy woods. Still there is no precedent yet on how the government will handle such a case. This is one of the main reasons why the Lacey Act needs to be amended; so it can address the real business concerns of professional woodworkers.

In our Lacey Act Compliance Program sheet you will find the requirements we have adopted for our wood vendors. We recommend that you adopt these same requirements for all your suppliers. Remember also that Lacey compliance means scrutinizing domestic suppliers as well. Just because someone chopped down a Maple tree on their own property does not mean that it was harvested legally! Avoid random EBay wood sales, save all your receipts, tag your wood to note supplier, botanical name etc. and keep a log of what particular woods go into what instruments (this will aid your customers).

If you are interested in CITES compliance, I am happy to answer questions about that also of course. These questions are, thankfully, a bit more cut and dry.

Chris Herrod -LMI
Chris@lmii.com

If I am not mistaken, for shipments into the US, I believe that the Lacey paperwork requirment only applies to commercial shipments or items over $2000 or $2500 (not sure which) .. most of us are selling guitars for more than that anyway, so it always applies ... anything, if it includes any ammount of shell in a commercial item, like selling a guitar, is supposed to have the USFW paperwork to get into the US.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Lacey applies to all shipments regardless of size or value. Generally, shipments valued at under $2,500.00 can be entered "informally", but if they contain any amount of wildlife material, any CITES I, II, or III woods, or require any species-specific permitting, they need to go through formal entry accompanied by proper permits and paperwork (much of which requires the use of a brokerage service. They may also need to be brought in only at specific ports of entry that are authorized to deal with APHIS or USFWS clearances. This applies equally to both commercial goods and to personal effects.

As a little support for what Chris has said.... We do sell wood to LMI and they did in fact require the contract to be signed before any wood could be shipped to them. The contract does show that they are doing the best they can towards due diligence as required under the Lacey Act.



The officials who came up with that idea have never been to a tropical forest or they would realize how ridiculous that idea is. Mahogany is being harvested at least 4 weeks boat ride up river. That's 30 days sitting in a motorized canoe being eaten alive by insects. After the boat arrives walk 5 miles to the nearest Mahogany tree. After the tree is down it probably takes a month to cut it up into cants. Then the wood sits and waits for the rains to come to raise the river level enough to float the wood downstream. The whole process may take 6 months before the wood reaches a shipping port. So Chris when do you want to go?



Add to the list of "buy with caution" your local Lumberyard. There is no way the general lumber industry can provide the type of due diligence that LMI employs.


In addition to the above suggestion it might be a good idea to take a photo of the wood and receipt together, especially wood that has a distinctive pattern.

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Lance Peck

Here’s a summary of the Gibson situation. India has for many years officially ruled that fingerboards (in their blank form) are legal to export, and that official Clarification is something that can't be argued by the U.S. government or anyone else (I have copies of the latest from July 13, 2011). This ruling is nothing new, since India has allowed many millions of fingerboards to be exported for decades with no problem. There are also other factors involved:

1) The U.S. has absolutely no laws prohibiting the use of Indian (or Madagascar!) rosewood and ebony as such, only general laws that require no tribal, state, national or international laws have been violated.

2) None of this has anything at all to do with overharvesting, illegal logging, or any other environmental issues. Veneers, guitars or anything else made of these same Indian woods would have been completely legal.

3) The supposed violations named in Special Agent Rayfield's warrant affidavit concern his private interpretation of Indian law about semi-finished raw materials or component parts. Lacey doesn't allow the U.S. to disagree or argue about another country's regulations, only to enforce their compliance (which in the matter of India were being complied with according to their own written document).

4) Lacey is what's called a "fact-based" as opposed to a "document-based" statute. In other words, simply possessing legitimate-looking paperwork won't protect anyone from confiscation, fines or imprisonment if indeed laws really were broken. It's the same legal principle that has always applied in U.S. mining law, that it's not how technically accurate the filed paperwork description of a claim's boundaries are but how it's actually marked out and posted on the ground.

Several complicating and confusing glitches were made on the paperwork from LMII's Indian ebony shipment, but what counts is whether or not any actual regulations were violated. They certainly don't seem to have been (in the case of India, at least), but it's up to the courts and not us to decide guilt or innocence. Hopefully, they'll toss this one out no matter how foolish it makes Special Agent Rayfield and the USFWS appear.

The Madagascar wood remains problematic since it does involve endangered trees, logging in a national forest, and a questionable state of political unrest in the country at the time the wood was exported with questions about the government's validity as a legitimately recognized power.

Just discovered (thanks to Lance Peck) is that counter to what I'd run across in a court decision about another agency, the Lacey Act DOES after all allow the U.S. to interpret another country's laws differently than they themselves do. There can be a violation even if the foreign law isn't enforced in that country, and even though the violation may not be a criminal one in the foreign country it will be here. (see: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/ ... Primer.pdf). In other words, you could be totally compliant according to foreign law as required by Lacey, and yet be arrested because the U.S. decides to interpret those laws differently! Am I missing something here?

The Lacey primer also states that for both paper and electronic submissions, the steps used in processing any submission will include:

"Declarations vetted for accuracy and compliance."

"Importer contacted if vetting reveals errors."

But Natalie at LMI says this not only didn't happen, but that FWS refused to talk to them when LMI found the error and tried to get it corrected:

"The broker for LMI had someone new working in their office who listed the "entry" as veneers <6mm despite all other paperwork listing it as sawn wood and fingerboards in excess of 6mm. The broker sent a letter explaining the error and attempted to contact FWS to correct the entry, but they refused to speak to him. A copy of the letter was sent to LMI as well as FWS.”

Unbelievable.
What a sad state of affairs.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

+1

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Jim Hansen

Chuck has been educating us very well . Just for some self entertainment I asked all the sellers on ebay if they did have CITIES paperwork. I can tell you that 2 responded . Only 1 had real documentation. I can also tell you that one seller that I had a personal experience is selling wood , calling it BRW that isn't.
True CITIES will have a seal and release information .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I think too much is being read into this Chuck:

Other Lacey Act Basics

1:The underlying foreign law violation does not have to be a criminal violation, nor one actively enforced in the foreign country.

OK, so the violation does not need to be criminal violation nor does it matter if the foreign country who wrote the law chooses to turn a blind eye and not enforce it, under Lacey, the USA can still proceed because there is a law...'but' a violation must still take place and that does not appear to have happened in this instance.

2: The underlying violation need not be committed by the person charged with violating the Lacey Act –a third party might have taken the product illegally.

As far as I am aware this did not happen either. LMI demonstrated appropriate 'due care' as required under Lacey when they had sort clarification specifying the very product involved in this shipment and were advised by the Indian Government that the shipping of Indian rosewood and ebony fretboard blanks did not violate their trade laws.

3: The underlying foreign law can be interpreted by U.S. Courts

Yes, these laws 'can' be interpreted by the "U.S. Courts", but 'not' by the USFWS. The courts are given this power because, unlike the FWS, they are bound by due process and would not be foolish enough to attempt to interpret a foreign law without prior consultation and qualified opinion to confirm the purpose and/or intent of those laws. To do so without that qualification would be certain to invite challenge of any ruling handed down based upon those interpretations. In other word, whilst under Lacey the U.S. Courts can make their own interpretations of foreign law, it does not mean they can do so without due consideration of the intent of those foreign governments when drafting their laws, and once that letter of clarification from the Indian Government made its way up to the bench, all the clarity and qualification required to allow the FWS case to be interpreted as the complete blunder it is will have been delivered....I don't see that anything has changed, Lacey is not special in this, courts deal with extradition orders all the time and the interpretation of foreign laws is a big part of that process....more times than not, common sense prevails

Cheers

Kim

Almost spewed my morning coffee as it reminded me of an Arlo Guthrie song, "The Pause of Mr. Clause" .

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

So what should Mr Schramm do?

I shipped two guitars from Michigan, destined for Berlin last month via USPS that never arrived. Now I am wondering if my documentation was incomplete on the customs form. Or possibly complete but percieved as erroneous. The woods were maple with Mahogany kerfed linings.

Is there a cost effective way to export guitars or parts such as a shipping agent for the small shop luthier? Insuring the product for its full value is not really what I am after as I am sure any craftsperson or artist would clearly understand.

Chuck and everyone, I really appreciate the information that you pass on here.

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Ken