I would have thought bodybuilding.com would have known full well about the implications of exporting dairy products to Europe. Most of the large sports nutrition retailers and distributors in the USA know all about it and a lot of them try their best to get around it. We get contacted all the time by big US distributors offering to sell us protein supplements and when I send them my pre-prepared email saying 'no thanks' I always ask them out of interest 'well how do you get around the protein issue' and their response is always along the lines of 'well thats the customer's problem/responsibility'.
The only legal way to import
protein supplements from the USA is to go direct to the manufacturer and become an official importer/distributor (although for this you need to prepare to order in volumes of 1000s and get there before anyone else gets the UK contract first). They will then supply you with the necessary documentation to legally import the products (which are certificates to prove that the dairy produce has come from a safe animal). As the UK importers for AST, this is what we have to do and it involves a fair amount of hoop jumping. Once its all done, we can ship the products over and rather than seizing/destroying the goods, customs simply ransom them to us for tens of thousands of pounds instead. Once we pay, we get the stock.
I feel very sorry for customers like the original poster here, who are not made aware of the legality and lose their money, and I do believe the American retailers should be culpable for offering to ship them to Europe in the first place, but I actually wish Customs would crack down harder on importation laws because its unfair to UK sellers that the likes of bodybuilding.com can get away with selling to European customers without having to pay the taxes we have to pay, and thereby be able to undercut their UK counterparts. They should have to play by the same rules, and pay the same taxes, as the rest of us.