The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is expected to release the new rules for submitting electronic import certificates for shipments containing organic food, feed, or fiber. The AMS 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.
The rule should be published in the coming weeks with full implementation of the requirement in the summer of 2021.