Eco-warrior Sting would be horrified.
On Tuesday November 17th, federal agents from the US Fish and Wildlife Service raided the offices of world-famous Gibson Guitars related to alleged imports of illegal wood for use in guitar frames. The story broke here.
This is the first bust associated with the new legislation called the Lacey Act amendments, which we’ve talked about elsewhere on this site. It’s hugely significant for a number of reasons:
1. Gibson are an American music icon
The US government aren’t holding their punches here and are looking to make a high-profile example to demonstrate that they are going to enforce the new legislation. This action will certainly deliver the message loud and clear to wood importers.
2. Gibson are FSC certified
As pointed out by Gibson themselves in their statement, “Gibson is a chain of custody certified buyer who purchases wood from legal suppliers who are to follow all standards.”
This exposes a practice that many in the timber trade abuse: Get a Chain-of-Custody certificate and the perception is that you only deal in certified timber, as the quote above clearly suggests.
But in reality nothing stops firms from limiting their use of certified timber to just one or two products. The actual proportion of certified timber used may be tiny. To be fair, Gibson use quite a bit of certified timber in their products as this FSC article explains, but that still leaves a significant portion of material uncertified and potentially illegal. What this bust demonstrates is that a certificate no longer protects you if you continue to import uncertified timber from dubious sources.
3. Even the experts were taken by surprise
Gibson’s statement also says, “Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO [Henry Juszkiewicz] sits on the board of the Rainforest Alliance and takes the issue of certification very seriously.” It was a shame none of his colleagues briefed him on the Lacey Act.
What next?
It’s not clear right now how much trouble Gibson are in. It depends on the sort of evidence the authorities have collected and whether Gibson was knowingly importing illegal timber or an innocent victim of their supplier’s dodgy dealings.
Even if innocent of knowingly importing illegal wood, Gibson can still be fined if it is shown that they didn’t exercise ‘due care and attention’ in sourcing the wood.
It is also a possibility that a lack of hard evidence will hamper efforts to prosecute this time round. That’s where DNA verification has a crucial role to play, just like it does in human criminal investigations. We can provide hard scientific evidence of the origin of the wood to support prosecutions just like these.
CAREERS