Going to Germany
Posted: 18 Jan 2006, 23:13
I am going to visit the country of Germany where my grandparents where born, I was wanting to know if anyone has any information on how I could bring fish back to the U.S. with me?
You'd definitely need an import license to take it into the US. You'd possibly also need an export license (probably not).
Not only is the paperwork for this sort of thing going to be "fun", but you'll probably also have to pay some sort of administration fee - this could be anything from a few dollars to hundreds, depending on whether the goverment expects a "one-time" export, or they expect companies that run for several years with a single license. I don't know anything about that, but I would expect the license to be "for the life of the company" or at least multiple years. This type of license is probably both expensive and complicated to get. On the other hand, it's possible that the license is one time only license for one shipment, in which case the license is probably much easier to get and pay for.
You could (perhaps) find an exporter in Germany, but not a lot of them would be likely to have a suitable license to import into the US, as there's very few native fish in Germany that would be exported to the US - cold water pond ones only[1], but unfortunately, not tropical ones. Only someone exporting fish bred in Germany would be likely to have the correct license - and they would be one that exports to the US, which is quite possibly not easy to find.
[1] Cold water species may be prohibited to export to the US as they can probably spread into natural habitats and compete with native species - not a good thing.
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Mats