The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Jan. 27 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.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Jan 19-22 in case they were missed.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is adopting as final its regulations defining exemptions from Lacey Act requirements for “common food crops” and “common cultivars,” in a Jan. 25 final rule (here). APHIS had set definitions for the terms on an interim basis in 2013 (see 13070808). The final rule adopts the interim rule without change.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will allow full filing of Lacey Act declarations through the Automated Commercial Environment “effective immediately,” it said on Jan. 22 (here). “APHIS and CBP are confident that the system is now ready for full Lacey Act integration based on the sustained success of LAP’s pilot project, which has experienced no data or system errors,” said APHIS. “APHIS has determined that its information technology (IT) infrastructure is sufficiently robust to handle the expected user activity, and the Agency will continue to expand its IT capabilities through an upgrade this summer.” Filers may continue to use the Automated Commercial System to submit Lacey Act declarations until Feb. 28, said APHIS. “We encourage all filers to use this time to test their filing systems in ACE for Lacey Act declarations.”
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on Jan. 20 issued a final rule that removes requirements for exporting of live animals, hatching eggs, and animal germplasm. The final rule (here) eliminates "most of the requirements for export health certifications, tests, and treatments from the regulations," instead "directing exporters to follow the requirements of the importing country regarding such processes and procedure,” said APHIS. Export health certificate requirements remain in place for livestock, and for eggs and germplasm if mandated by the importing country. APHIS will also allow, in some cases, pre-export inspection to occur at facilities other than an export inspection facility at the port of export. The final rule takes effect Feb. 19.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing 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.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes Jan. 14 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 Jan. 13 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 Jan. 12 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.