The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes April 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 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes April 15 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 extending the period for comments until May 5 on its recent proposal to allow imports of fresh apples and pears from Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands without going through an ongoing preclearance program, it said (here). The fruit would have to be produced under a systems approach consisting of production site and packinghouse registration, inspection of registered production sites, postharvest safeguards, fruit culling, traceback, sampling, cold treatment against Mediterranean fruit fly in countries where the pest is known to occur, a phytosanitary certificate, port of entry inspection, and importation as commercial consignments only, said APHIS in the Jan. 20 proposed rule (see 1601190046).
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes April 11 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 announced changes April 7 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 announced changes April 6 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 issuing a final rule (here) that beginning on May 9 will allow importation of fresh Andean blackberries and raspberries from Ecuador into the continental U.S., and is also proposing (here) to allow imports of fresh pitahaya fruit from the country into the lower 48. Comments on the pitahaya proposal are due June 7. Importation would in all cases be subject to a systems approach and be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate. Effective April 8, APHIS is also amending regulations on importation of fresh peppers from Ecuador to limit importation to the continental U.S. (here). APHIS had in October erroneously allowed importation of fresh Ecuadorian peppers to the entire U.S., it said (see 1510230030).
The Animal and Plant Health Information Service would disrupt important trade relationships between the U.S. and Canada if the agency continues forward with a rulemaking to cut out exemptions to wood packaging requirements, said U.S. and Canadian trade groups in an April 1 letter (here). The 38 groups asked that APHIS "terminate the current rulemaking process and actively engage with stakeholders" to consider whether the rulemaking is the best course to address invasive species problems. The regulatory change in question would subject wood packaging materials made from Canadian wood to the same ISPM-15 treatment and marking requirements currently applicable to all other countries.
Despite some brief “system slowdowns” for ACE users following the March 31 mandatory use dates for most entry summaries and certain PGA entries in ACE, the issues “have been resolved,” said a CBP spokeswoman. CBP "regrets" the issues and has its "technical teams operating 24/7” to increase “monitoring of ACE system performance to address any additional need for faster response times while maintaining the security and integrity of the system,” she said.
Informal entries (type 11) aren't subject to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Lacey Act declaration requirement, CBP said in a CSMS message (here) meant to further clarify the agency's ACE timeline (see 1603250048). That means the Lacey Act data won't be required on type 11 entries or entry summaries in ACE, said CBP. "Electronic entry type 11 entry summaries, without PGA data other than [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration]" is now required to be filed in ACE, said CBP. "Electronic entry type 11 entries, without PGA data other than NHTSA, will be required to be filed in ACE on May 28, 2016," it said.