As @armiyana already mentioned, this is a rather xenophobic framing. There’s no indication that these rodents are necessarily of inferior quality. I feel like there’d be many people that would be fine with imported rodents, so far as they know where they’re coming from, and that the distributors at least have oversight on the producers they purchase from. There are already facilities that purchase directly from Chinese producers themselves, so obviously the market exists.
At least for me, the issue here isn’t that they come from China, it’s that I’ve been sold an imported product that was claimed to be something else. I worry about the environmental and economic impacts of my purchases, the level of oversight being conducted, and traceability if there were a quality issue. These companies have FAQs and About pages touting the safety and quality of their products, as well as the animal welfare involved, and making it seem like these are locally produced. I chose my supplier based on those claims, and now I’m finding out several of them are either untrue or unverifiable.
I am guessing that RodentPro is in the process of changing their bags. I just got a few bags about a month ago, and they have the stamped info like your picture with size, quantity, weight near the top of the bag.
I’m no help for the original question but I work in petfood labeling (finally, my one very specific time to shine! ) and imported products are supposed to state the country of origin (e.g. Made in China somewhere on the package). If you can’t find it anywhere on the labeling (my mice come in ziplock bags with sharpie scrawled on the front so I’ve never seen that company’s packaging) you might have US grown ones or possibly the company only has one version of the packaging they use for both domestic and imported and they just overlooked it , especially if it’s a smaller company (which I’m assuming they are and they aren’t lucky enough to have one of me on staff–but if you’re reading this I will accept mice in exchange for consulting services ).
This is what all the research I’d done was saying. Customs and the Tariff Act require labeling of imported food products.
Much like your mice, up until about the last six months, all of mine have come with the usual handwritten Sharpie on the bag. The packaging photos I posted here are two separate new types I’ve received in recent shipments. Unfortunately the assumption here that they are a smaller company would be incorrect. RodentPro is one of, if not the largest, producers of frozen feeder rodents in the world. I’m left wondering if they were either reported or inspected and that’s the reason for the sudden changes.
Of course you don’t, and I never implied any deception whatsoever. All I pointed out is that the link you offered led to a site with information that was obviously erroneous. The implication there is that we shouldn’t base negative feedback of companies on erroneous information. Hopefully that’s not at all controversial.
I recently (Dec 20) emailed Layne to ask if they ever sold any rodents that they didn’t produce in house. I have yet to receive a response. That’s not the first time I’ve gotten ghosted by Layne in a situation that called for a response.
I also emailed Big Cheese at the same time. They said they did supplement their inhouse production with outside rodents, but did not respond to a request for the source of those rodents.
We’ve done a lot more research since this thread started. I paid for a subscription to an import records site and Jess and I have been going over what information is available there. We’ll put together some of the files for everyone to see but it’s all pretty concrete stuff.
These are the biggest importers (from the chinese companies Honfer, Yukylin, Daren Fusheng, Zhongfu, and BabyMouse)
ARS - Big Cheese - Layne - Rodent Pro - ECO Herp Publishing (Chiricahua Desert Museum)
There are also tons of records that trace back to freight and shipping companies in Southern California. The trail ends with them though, because they’re just shippers, they have no affiliation with reptiles.
I will say, the likely reason you’re not getting a reply from Layne is because they heavily tout their rodents being produced in their own facilities and never being irradiated. It’s possible there is another reason for their imports and that they’re not being repackaged and sold, but if they are, they have a lot of motivation not to say so.
Big Cheese likely has similar interest in not causing a stir over where they get their supplementals. Someone told they do sell outside sourced may just assume they’re from another company or lab surplus and not go further.
All of this is obviously speculation, we’re just trying to follow the imports at the moment and trace them from origin to end point. There’s a lot of data to go through, some of these resources are difficult to work with. I’m actually currently going through government data on the facilities themselves.
Wow, thank you both! This is highly valuable information. As a community member, I really appreciate your bringing this to light, delving into the information, and sharing with the rest of us. Kudos and props and thank you again!!
Here are some BOLs I pulled. It doesn’t say if the weight is gross or net but even if it’s net, a 40’ freezer box weighs about 8000lbs. That would mean most of these shipments are between 7,000 and 14,000lbs of rodents. If they’re net weights then they’re all between 15-22,000lbs per cargo container. Either way, it’s A LOT.
First consider that the companies producing them have to have some holding time. With the absolutely insane volume going out, they couldn’t risk not have 40-50,000lbs in the freezer ready to go. There would certainly be a decent turnover but I’d assume 1-4 weeks of storage time on the suppliers end.
Fastest transport time, including customs on both ends, is around 4 weeks. That can easily be 8-9 weeks if it’s a larger ship or weather is bad. If the ship gets caught up in customs due to any other cargo with bad paperwork, customs can pretty much hold things up indefinitely.
From there, it’s loaded on a train or truck with a total transit time of 4-7 days depending on how far they go.
There would also be probably 1-6 weeks on the distributors end.
So pretty much going to be 2 months old at best and who knows how long on the far end. Given the quantities required, distributers could be holding it months so potentially 6-8 months.
So this would explain why I was “given” a bag of partially thawed and then refrozen bag of mice to scent the weaned rats I was buying for the couple of ball python babies I was switching (from mice to rats).
Which could possibly explain some of the mysterious illnesses that have befallen some of the animals posted about in the past….I know. Over reaching Caron!
I wouldn’t call this one an overreach, though it also can’t be confirmed and I’d be wary of pointing fingers without that. What I can say is if you talk to enough people, you will hear horror stories of animals lost due to bad feeders from different companies. I had a loss earlier this year, for example.
While it doesn’t really concern me what country is producing my feeders, I do care how they are treated both before and after culling, which gets progressively harder to track with more middlemen.
Does anyone know of any frozen mice sources that they don’t think are importing? I know its impossible to really confirm, but it seems like this thread has just named every online retailer for frozen mice. It kind of feels like I don’t have a choice unless I breed my own or find someone locally who does, especially since all of the shops in my area just stock Laynes
You nailed my concerns. It’s not about where, it’s about how. With imports from across the world, the where makes the how much harder to assess.
Perfect Prey says that they do not. I can’t swear that this is true of my own knowledge, but they don’t seem to be listed in the import info which was researched by @noodlehaus and @ballornothing (unless I overlooked it somehow).
Those bags are marked exactly like the ones I get
from ARS. They also have the little white pieces of paper with the gram weights of the mice inserted in each bag……
) and imported products are supposed to state the country of origin (e.g. Made in China somewhere on the package). If you can’t find it anywhere on the labeling (my mice come in ziplock bags with sharpie scrawled on the front so I’ve never seen that company’s packaging) you might have US grown ones or possibly the company only has one version of the packaging they use for both domestic and imported and they just overlooked it 
, especially if it’s a smaller company (which I’m assuming they are and they aren’t lucky enough to have one of me on staff–but if you’re reading this I will accept mice in exchange for consulting services 
).
