The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing a new de minimis exemption from Lacey Act declaration requirements for importers. Under the proposed rule, importers would not have to submit declarations for products with minimal amounts of plant material. The agency is considering setting thresholds based on either weight or volume at either the product or entry line level. APHIS is also proposing to codify certain declaration requirements in its regulations, including a deadline of three days after importation for the submission of declarations, and seeks comments on a separate exemption for composite wood products. Comments on both exemptions are due Sept. 7.
Emergency Action Notifications issued by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service can’t be challenged at the Court of International Trade, CIT said in a decision issued June 20. Dismissing an importer’s challenge to an EAN citing contaminated wood packaging material and ordering destruction or exportation of the entire shipment, CIT found U.S. district courts have jurisdiction over actions by the Agriculture Department and transferred the case to the Southern Texas U.S. District Court.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to allow importation of fresh avocado fruit from continental Ecuador into the continental United States. Conditions would include a systems approach with production site registration, field sanitation, packinghouse procedures designed to exclude the quarantine pests and procedures for packing, storing and shipping the avocado fruit. Shipments would have to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate from the Ecuadorean government. Comments are due Aug. 14.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced it has found Japan to be free of classical
swine fever and swine vesicular disease. The change in disease status, which eliminates certain requirements for importation of live swine, pork and pork products from Japan, takes effect July 9.
An importer will drop its court challenge of an Emergency Action Notification blocking its shipment of corn at the Port of San Francisco, after reaching an agreement with the government to settle the case. In return for voluntarily dismissing its lawsuit, Sunrise will get an in-person meeting with representatives of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Washington, according to the settlement agreement. The shipment of corn, initially released based on an entry documentation that said it was organic and from Turkey but later found to be of Russian, Moldovan and Kazakhstani origin, never left its ship, and departed the Port of San Francisco the day after Sunrise’s initial bid for a court order failed in April (see 1804240065). Sunrise maintains that the shipment complied with all APHIS requirements. Sunrise agreed to dismissal with prejudice, which means it can’t bring the same legal claim again.
The Fish and Wildlife Service recently clarified inspection requirements for shipments that include both plants and wildlife listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, whether or not CITES-listed. The April 16 policy bulletin, posted to the FWS website on May 31, clarifies the application of a 2016 agreement between FWS and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that allows FWS inspectors to validate such shipments, which has “led to some confusion as to which agency provides inspection,” FWS said.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will allow imports of tree tomatoes from Ecuador, it said in final rule. To be eligible, tree tomatoes from Ecuador would have to be “produced in accordance with a systems approach that would include requirements for importation in commercial consignments, registration and monitoring of places of production, field monitoring and pest-control practices, trapping, and inspection for quarantine pests by the national plant protection organization of Ecuador,” APHIS said. The final rule takes effect July 5.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will allow imports of human medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients without requiring an APHIS import permit, it said in a stakeholder import alert. “An APHIS import permit (VS Form 16-6), will no longer be required for FDA approved human medical devices containing animal origin ingredients, when the devices are in final dosage form and ready for use (in bulk form or single packaged),” APHIS said. The new policy takes effect May 31.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., introduced a bill meant to prevent "imports of fraudulent organic products that undercut American farmers," she said in a news release. The Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act would require that all National Organic Program Import Certificates include information on "the organic standard to which the agricultural product is certified," among other things. The bill would also require the Agriculture Secretary to create a system to track organic import certificates, which may be added "into any existing information tracking systems for imports of agricultural products." The Agriculture Department would also have to publicly release "detailed quantitative data on imports of organically produced agricultural products accepted
into" the U.S.. The legislation also calls for information sharing between ACE and the Hypomania Certificate Issuance and Tracking System of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The bill follows industry concerns and press reports related to cheap imports improperly labeled as organic (see 1705150031).
With CBP expected to allow for multiple options for filing Section 321 entries, some significant uncertainty remains for how the partner government agencies will treat goods imported at values under the $800 de minimis threshold, said Lenny Feldman, a lawyer with Sandler Travis. Still, there have been some indications for what to expect from the PGAs on the issue, he said. "Goods that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulate would seem to be excluded from section 321 processing because the customs regulations already mention alcohol and tobacco as exceptions to de minimis processing," Feldman said in a May 20 email. Pharmaceuticals and medical devices regulated by the Food and Drug Administration also seem unlikely to receive Section 321 filing exemptions, he said.