The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is considering allowing imports of mamey sapote, mombin, sapodilla and soursop fruits from Mexico. The agency is recommending in four pest risk analyses that imports be allowed subject to certain conditions, including phytosanitary treatment in the form of radiation, a phytosanitary certificate from the Mexican government and port of entry inspections. Comments on the draft pest risk analyses are due July 1.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service may allow the importation of certain citrus fruits from China, it said in a notice. The agency has issued a draft pest risk analysis that recommends imports of pomelo, Nanfeng honey mandarin, ponkan, sweet orange, and Satsuma mandarin be allowed, with certain conditions including an import permit, phytosanitary certificate from the Chinese government, registration of production locations and packinghouses, and port of entry inspections, among other things. Comments on the draft pest risk analysis are due July 1.
APHIS Still in Planning Phases for Mandatory APHIS Core in ACE, Will Set Up Help Desk for Transition
SAN ANTONIO -- The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will set up a range of outreach options, including a help desk, to assist importers, customs brokers and software developers with the upcoming mandatory use of the APHIS “Core” partner government agency message set in ACE, said Dr. Vivek Kamath of APHIS at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America's annual conference April 16. The agency is still in the “planning phases” for the move and the “final timeline is not yet decided,” Kamath said.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to revise existing requirements for importing fragrant pears from the Korla region of Xinjiang, China, and also allow imports of fragrant pears from the Akesu region of Xinjiang, it said in a notice. Comments are due June 17.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is seeking comments by May 10 on using a "standardized set of pest risk mitigations for routine market requests to import plants in approved growing media," the agency said in an April 9 new release. The use of a "programmatic environmental assessment would eliminate the need to prepare a unique environmental assessment for each routine market request, thereby making the process for approving imports of plants in approved growing media simpler and more efficient," APHIS said in a notice. Most pest mitigation measures APHIS proposes are very similar and a default mitigation structure "would ensure continued levels of safeguarding while facilitating international trade, allowing healthier plant imports, reducing the growing time for plants to reach markets, reducing unnecessary or repetitive environmental and other documentation, and increasing the speed of port of entry inspections," it said. The agency also posted a draft version of the programmatic environmental assessment.
The Food Safety Inspection Service will allow exports of raw poultry products from Honduras to the U.S., FSIS said in a final rule. “The FSIS review of Honduras’ laws, regulations, and inspection system demonstrated that its poultry slaughter inspection system is equivalent to the system FSIS has established under the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) and its implementing regulations,” the agency said. The determination applies only to raw poultry products. Honduras would need to get a separate equivalency determination for exports of heat-treated poultry such as canned or cooked product, FSIS said. Also, despite the equivalency determination, Honduras is currently ineligible to ship raw poultry to the U.S. because it is not recognized by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to be free of Newcastle Disease, FSIS said. The final rule takes effect May 6.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing new standards that would allow it to recognize “compartments” for animal disease status in foreign countries. The standards would ”closely parallel” procedures for recognizing the disease status of regions in foreign countries for the purposes of setting import restrictions on livestock. Compartmentalization, as recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health, “is a procedure that a country may implement to define and manage animal subpopulations of distinct health status and under common biosecurity management within its territory,” APHIS said. “Compartmentalization is distinct from regionalization, which involves the recognition of geographical zones of a country that can be identified and characterized by their level of risk for different diseases, but the two are not mutually exclusive.” Comments are due June 3.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is adding China to its list of regions subject to import restrictions on pork and pork products because they are affected by African swine fever, it said. China reported an outbreak of the swine disease in August 2018. "As a result, pork and pork products, including casings, from China are subject to APHIS import restrictions designed to mitigate the risk of ASF introduction into the United States," the notice said. Restrictions take effect retroactively to Aug. 6, 2018.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is moving toward allowing imports of jujube fruit from China. The agency issued a draft pest risk analysis that recommended imports of jujube be allowed, with certain conditions including an import permit, phytosanitary certificate from the Chinese government, registration of production locations and packinghouses, and port of entry inspections, among other things. Comments on the draft pest risk analysis are due May 24.
Filing in ACE of Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service “core” partner government agency (PGA) message set data is about to be announced in a Federal Register notice coming in “March or April,” beginning a six- to nine-month informed compliance period before the new data becomes mandatory, Livingston International said in a client alert. The new electronic filing requirements will cover APHIS-regulated commodities, besides Lacey Act data, which is already mandatory in ACE, and will include PGA message set data from 18 paper licenses, permits, certificates and other documents, including health certificates, phytosanitary certificates and import permits. An update to the CBP and trade advanced interface requirements (CATAIR) for APHIS Core, issued in October 2016, “will be required and is expected that it will be reissued upon the announcement,” Livingston said.