The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Dec. 30 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is reopening the comment period until Jan. 30 on its proposal to restructure the regulations on imports of plants for planting. The April 2013 proposed rule would move plant-specific requirements from the regulations to the Plants for Planting Manual, which APHIS said would allow a quicker notice-based process for changing import requirements instead of the formal rulemaking process currently used. APHIS is reopening the period for comments to get input on whether to use a particular standard and how to address the risk posed when plant brokers purchase and move plants for planting after they leave their place of production and before they are exported to the U.S.
The Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to amend the regulations to allow the import of fresh blueberry fruit from Morocco into the U.S. As a condition of entry, the blueberries would have to be produced under a systems approach employing a combination of mitigation measures for two quarantine pests, Ceratitis capitata and Monilinia fructigena, and would have to be inspected prior to export from Morocco and found free of the pests.
The Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will allow the import of avocados from continental Spain (excluding the Balearic Islands and Canary Islands) into the U.S. The avocados will have to be produced in accordance with a systems approach that includes registration of production locations and packing houses, pest monitoring, sanitary practices, chemical and biological controls, and phytosanitary treatment, it said.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Dec. 24 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Effective immediately, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is imposing new entry requirements on blueberries imported from Chile. APHIS is requiring blueberry shipments from regions VI, VII, and VIII destined to the United States be fumigated with methyl bromide at the point of origin, and will also subject Chilean blueberry imports to an increased inspection rate at the port of export and entry. The new requirements are necessary to prevent the spread of European Grapevine Moth (EGVM) (Lobesia botrana) recently found in Chilean blueberry orchards, said APHIS.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Dec. 19 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to allow imports of beef from certain regions in Brazil. The beef would be subject to the same requirements currently in place for imports of beef and bovine meat from Uruguay, including that foot-and-mouth disease hasn’t been diagnosed in the exporting region of Brazil within the previous 12 months, and that the beef comes from bovines from premises where foot-and-mouth disease hasn’t been present during their lifetime. The beef would also be subject to veterinary inspections and require a meat inspection certificate. Only approved Brazilian facilities would be eligible to supply exported beef.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Dec. 18 to Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
The CBP Port of San Francisco warned the trade of potential difficulties following the "imminent shutdown of the only remaining fumigation facility in the Oakland area." CBP recently received word of the coming closure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, it said in an information notice. The operator of the facility has decided to decrease and eventually stop all fumigations at the site, said CBP. "Containerized cargo entering the port containing commodities requiring mandatory fumigation will be adversely affected when the existing fumigation facility begins to scale down and eventually cease operations," said CBP. "As a result, arriving legitimate cargo requiring USDA mitigation (fumigation) may be refused entry and require re-exportation or destruction. "While there is no "firm date" for the closure, CBP and USDA will keep the trade apprised of developments, said CBP.