Lacey Act

Background

The Lacey Act was passed to prohibit the international and interstate trafficking of illegally obtained wildlife and fish or parts thereof. A violation of the Lacey Act may constitute a federal felony offense and under federal sentencing guidelines the penalties for even minor infractions can be quite severe.

Interstate transportation of wildlife, fish, or parts thereof that violates a state law in the receiving state or the state shipped from, is a Lacey Act violation. Thus, what may be a misdemeanor state violation in both of the two states involved, is immediately elevated to a federal felony offense, simply because state boundaries were crossed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the agency that enforces the Lacey Act and their Enforcement Division has historically applied this act to the international and interstate movement of private aquacultural products. In part this is because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not recognize the private ownership of aquacultural products.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director’s Order Number 27 placed a low priority on using the Lacey Act against aquacultural producers except in instances where disease transmission or non-indigenous fish species are involved. Unfortunately, various Regional Directors are interpreting this order differently complicating interstate transport. This order does not address private ownership of aquacultural products.

Policy

The NAA:

1. Supports legislation to exempt private aquacultural products from the Lacey Act.
2. Supports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledgment that aquaculture products, legitimately reared in private culture, are PRIVATE property, not public. We further support efforts that recognize aquacultured products as private property in federal and state laws and regulations.
3. Supports efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA to compile and disseminate annually a list of all state and federal regulations that pertain to aquaculture.

Approved March 1999