In November 2009 the Gibson Guitar Company was served with a warrant by agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service who are looking for timber species that cannot be legally imported into the USA. Reports in the media and from Gibson revelas that the company cooperated fully in assisting the Federal Service with their investigations into the certification of legally imported timbers. At the time Gibson reported that its Chairman and CEO sits on the board of the Rainforest Alliance and takes the issue of certification very seriously.
The Gibson Guitar facility in Memphis was again raided by federal authorities this week. Agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were at the Gibson factory this week. Staff were ordered from the building and sent home.
The following clip is from ABC’s News 2 service in Nashville. (excuse the advertising)
apparently it’s not about the timber as such. it is about the concept that the fingerboards are bought as blanks from India and Madagascar , apparently (according to the US officials and not India and Madagascar officials) the fingerboards have to be bought as a finished fingerboards and not as a fingerboard blanks.
Go figure, Crazy stuff.
I would have thought that if what you offer as a product for sale was a blank fingerboard then your work is completed once you have created the blank.
I agree, the finished product is the blank. But it’s the Feds interpretation that is the worry and how they could possibly bankrupt a company which has no meaningful legal recourse.
frightening
Many of us will be watching what unfolds in anticipation. May sanity prevail.