The Food Safety and Inspection Service is proposing to amend its regulations by amending lists of foreign countries eligible to export meat, poultry and egg products to the U.S., and instead use only the lists it currently maintains on its website. “This change would allow FSIS to more efficiently provide the public with more accurate and up-to-date information,” it said. “The criteria FSIS uses to evaluate whether a foreign country is eligible to export meat, poultry, or egg products would remain in the regulations and would not change. FSIS would continue to provide an opportunity for public comment when proposing to list new countries as eligible to export these products to the United States.” Comments are due June 11.
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 Agricultural Marketing Service is postponing a referendum allowing importers and domestic producers of fresh and frozen mangoes covered by a national research and promotion order to vote on whether to continue including frozen mangoes in the program. AMS added frozen mangoes in a final rule that took effect March 25, beginning assessments of a $0.01 per pound fee on imports of frozen mangoes that had previously been assessed only on fresh mangoes. Imports of less than 200,000 pounds of frozen mangoes per year are exempt from assessments. Previously set for March 25 through April 12, the referendum will now be conducted May 13 through June 3, AMS said.
The Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation on April 4 announced that Special Import Quota #24 for upland cotton will be established on April 11, allowing importation of 12,157,032 kilograms (55,836 bales) of upland cotton, down from 12,665,348 kilograms (58,171 bales) in the last quota period. It will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than July 9, 2019, and entered into the U.S. by Oct. 7, 2019. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally adjusted average rate for the period December 2018 through February 2019, the most recent three months for which data is available.
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 Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation on March 28 announced that Special Import Quota #23 for upland cotton will be established on April 4, allowing importation of 12,665,348 kilograms (58,171 bales) of upland cotton, the same as the last quota period. It will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than July 2, 2019, and entered into the U.S. by Sept. 30, 2019. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally adjusted average rate for the period November 2018 through January 2019, the most recent three months for which data is available.
A timber conglomerate backed by a prominent Chinese national is illegally extracting timber from Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, watchdog group Environmental Investigation Agency said in a March 25 news release. The Dejia Group is alleged to have supplied timber to the U.S. and "other countries where the importation of illegally sourced timber is a crime, including France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Greece," the EIA said. U.S. authorities are currently investigating possible Lacey Act violations related to the use of veneers from Evergreen Hardwoods Inc. (see 1903190027), which EIA said is a major importer of Dejia Group timber. “The Dejia-Evergreen case demonstrates the need for US authorities to routinely check due diligence systems, and to vigorously enforce the Lacey Act,” said Lisa Handy, director of EIA’s Forest Campaign. “Otherwise, illegal timber will continue to flow into the US, and American consumers will remain unwitting supporters of devastating forest crime.” The EU should consider all timber products from the Republic of the Congo and Gabon high risk under the EU Timber Regulations, EIA said in recommendations based on the report.
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.