Four-Inch Regulation
The "Four-Inch Regulation" or "Four-Inch Law" is a colloquial name for a regulation issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1975, restricting the sale of turtles with a carapace length of less than four inches. Exceptions are provided for scientific and educational use, export, and private sale.
The regulation was promulgated, according to the FDA, "because of the public health impact of turtle-associated salmonellosis." There had been reported cases of young children placing small turtles in their mouths, which led to the size-based restriction.
Read more about this topic: Salmonellosis
Famous quotes containing the words four-inch and/or regulation:
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)