The BBC says the European Parliament bans illegal timber

The new law will force companies operating in the EU to produce “chain of supply” documentation so that, in principle, each piece of timber can be traced right back to its source.

This extends a rapidly growing field in security. The first thing that comes to my mind is that this ban will increase pressure to devise ways to prevent illegal goods from being injected into and masked by legal shipments. Already there is huge demand for skills and technology to securely identify and transport military, food and pharmaceutical goods.

The Forestry Department offers a document called Best practices for improving law compliance in the forest sector that indicates log tracking is still very primitive.

Oregon State University issued a press release a few years ago with examples of how well security technology works and could be improved.

“At the moment, we have ways of tracking logs that are only partially effective,” Murphy said. “Bar coding is awkward and leaves plastic tags or metal staples that can cause problems in mills. Radio frequency identification tags are very expensive; with some pulp logs they might cost more than the product you are selling. So we need improved technologies.”

Aroma tagging, Murphy said, is already being used in the marketplace – some manufacturers have used it to help prevent brand piracy. The food industry uses electronic nose systems to measure freshness, the medical profession to detect disease, natural gas companies to detect leaks and in law enforcement to identify drugs or explosives.

Interesting problems to solve. It also brings to mind political issues related to Chinese industry regulation and the relationship with Africa.

China’s failure to take meaningful action against illegal logging and timber imports, failure to meet existing commitments or even to adopt meaningful policies is alarming. China’s continuing spectacular increase in imports of logs and timber, much of it illegal in origin, to either manufacture for re-export to the United States and other countries or for its domestic use and the large scale Olympics building program underway is, in effect, fuelling a crisis that the United States and other G8 nations have given increasing priority, including in the Gleneagles Summit in the UK last month when commitments were made to end imports of illegally logged products.

China’s role in Africa’s illegal logging crisis is predatory in nature and poses a threat to forests, the communities that rely on them and weak governments susceptible to corruption.