APHIS Announces Two-Stage Enforcement of Core Requirements
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced a two-stage enforcement of the APHIS Core message set to allow trade an additional 45 days to adjust to the data requirements.
Stage 1: January 25, 2021
Filers are REQUIRED to submit message set data for regulated products. During this time, APHIS will continue to maintain “warning” level Harmonized Tariff Code flagging.
Stage 2: March 15th, 2021
APHIS will fully enforce the message set submission using “reject” severity flagging. This will prevent entries from being transmitted for cargo release that lack the message set.
Impacted commodities are flagged as either AQ-1 (may be required) or AQ-2 (required). This means that even if your company does not import articles of an agricultural nature, your products may be flagged. If that is the case, you may be contacted for approval to disclaim that requirement at the time of entry.
If you have questions on your company’s status, please contact transitionus@willsonintl.com and we will route you to the team handling the implementation.