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🇺🇸 United States

Lacey Act (plant provisions)

16 U.S.C. §§ 3371–3378, as amended by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008

In forceVerified

Last editorial review: 2026-07-07

Scope

Any person importing, exporting, transporting, selling, receiving, acquiring or purchasing covered plants and plant products in or into the United States.

Commodities covered

WoodPlants and plant products generally

Key obligations

  • Prohibition on trading plants taken or traded in violation of underlying law (16 U.S.C. § 3372(a)).
  • Plant import declaration: scientific name, value, quantity, country of harvest (16 U.S.C. § 3372(f)), phased in by APHIS.
  • Fact-based liability: due care is relevant to penalty exposure; there is no formal due-diligence safe harbour.

Notes

The Lacey Act targets illegality under an underlying law rather than deforestation as such; it is nonetheless the principal US instrument relevant to forest-risk sourcing. The APHIS declaration-requirement phase-in schedule determines which HTS codes currently require declarations — check the current phase before advising importers.

Official sources