The U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA), through the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), has a National Organic Program (NOP) that established international organic import and export policies to help facilitate the trade of organic farms and businesses worldwide.
The AMS is expected to release the new rules for submitting electronic import certificates for shipments containing organic food, feed, or fiber. The change is expected to ‘flag’ 7,200 tariff numbers as potentially subject to this requirement. Therefore, it will become important that the documents indicate whether or not a product is certified organic. The customs broker will need to either file the disclaimer or provide the import certificate number from the foreign exporter.
CSMS #42280794 was released stating that the message set for the National Organics Program is in CBP’s ACE (Automated Commercial Environment) system as of April 25th, 2020. The AMS is working on a final rule published in the Federal Register to require that the new data is submitted through CBP’s ACE (Automated Commercial Environment). In addition to the electronic filing of certificates, the rule is expected to end the exemptions available for some uncertified handlers of organic products.
Finally, these changes are expected to bring a new platform that will allow organic certification companies to generate certificate data for the exporter or final handler of the product. This certificate will be needed by the broker to input the information into CBP’s ACE system.
The changes appear to be one year away from full implementation. Additional information on the NOP can be found on the USDA’s website.