Info request:

Erm, ok, i realise that firefly is soft sci fi and even then you can play pretty fast and loose with the physics as necessary, b-u-ut i was wondering...

Do we know anything about bio-regs at all? Decontamination before landfall, quarantine for pets* etc.
And (Tribbles aside) infestation must be something of an issue especially given transportation of livestock, produce and what not.

Any links or answers would be shiny.

*i have a notion that the Tam family pet got kennelled at some point but can't remember where i picked the idea up from.

The crew gets innocked, Serenity has some filters aboard, and anything on the outside would be burned off on entry.

If they failed to innock properly or there were issues with animals, it might require quarantine. On the other hand, maybe those are some of the regulations they're smuggling to get around in Shindig and Safe.

wytchcroft wrote:Do we know anything about bio-regs at all? Decontamination before landfall, quarantine for pets* etc.
And (Tribbles aside) infestation must be something of an issue especially given transportation of livestock, produce and what not.

I have written this kind of thing into several of my stories, but I agree with Bytemite, that there's not much on it in canon. Except perhaps that all that smuggling is to get around such-like regulations.

But given the kind of regulations that exist present-day, particularly with regard to produce and animal transport, I think quarantines and other restrictions would have to be in place. I've drawn some of the ones I've written into the stories from regulations I've encountered in real life. Such as, for example, not being allowed to bring fresh fruit from the mainland into Hawaii, even though it's all U.S. and no international border is crossed, because agricultural product imports into Hawaii are very strictly enforced. I've also had my lunch confiscated when flying back from Canada to U.S., even when the confiscated item was a fruit purchased in Canada that was actually grown in the U.S. and labelled as such. Another experience that stayed with me was a visit to the west of England during that foot-and-mouth thing, and not being allowed to take walks through the countryside, on account of signs posted disallowing the usual kinds of right-of-way, as an attempt to enforce a quarantine of sorts.

I put some of these experiences into The Trial, Shadow / One Man's Trash, and Two by Two by Two, which included, respectively, unauthorized immigration of people, cattle smuggling to avoid regulations, and smuggling of fresh fruits and vegetables. My most recent story, What Begins with an Apple, also involved smuggling of live chickens, but I ignored the regulatory aspect of it in the story, as I was concerned with other matters!

In my headcanon, the Alliance is quite restrictive, and getting past all the red tape is a transport ship's nightmare. Large-scale interplanetary transport companies have whole departments that are devoted to keeping up with licensing, regulation, tarriffs, and such. That is why independent owner/operators like Mal have such a hard time: they simply can't afford to hire someone whose only job is to keep up with the legal aspects, nor can they afford to pay for inspections/licenses when it's just for a one-time shipment of cattle to Jianying, and not for a year-long contract to ship cattle every month. Big companies like Blue Sun take tremendous advantage of this system to establish near-monopolies, and they lobby the government really hard to stack the system in their favor.

^That's pretty much exactly the verse as I understand it.

There HAS been a movement for the independent traders to band together to get out from under the Blue Sun monopoly called the Trader's Guild. Blue Sun doesn't like it, and the Alliance harrasses them through legal loopholes and slews of new law at Blue Sun's behest, trying to trip up members on something so they can arrest them.

In my story Mal is sympathetic to the Trader's Guild, and vice-versa, and Mal likes to talk business with friends he has who have become full fledged members, but Mal himself is reluctant to officially join. Probably for good reason, as no organization is wholly good, and Mal dislikes being told what to do, and because Blue Sun and the Alliance could sweep in and crush them.

Where does the info about the Trader's Guild come from?

RPG, and Qmx has done some stuff with them, like the New Canaan Run Atlas is a Trader's Guild publication about a popular trade route from the core to the rim and the planets that a crew might hit up, what they export, what they need.

I don't know anything about the trader's guild as I don't have any of the RPG materials.

They're pretty useful, I use them to assess what's within the realm of possibility for characters and their abilities.

I could actually send a pdf to you, the old version I have is out of print anyway, so it's not like we'd be denying anyone any money.

I'd be up for that. I think I probably have them all, but a handy pdf version that I can access on my computer when ever I want is... handy!

Okay, I'll send a copy to you too.

and i forgot to say thanks! useful info appreciated