Reminder - Enforcement of Metric Requirement for Lacey Declaration Begins Jul 1
Officials from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have confirmed that APHIS will be enforcing its requirement for plant material quantities to be reported on the paper and electronic Lacey Act declaration using standardized metric units (such as kg, m, m2, and m3) for filings made on or after July 1, 2010.
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APHIS had provided a two month grace period from its original implementation date of May 1, 2010 for this metric units requirement. (See ITT's Online Archives or 05/28/10 news, 10052827, for recent BP summary.)
In addition, CBP sources had previously stated that no Automated Broker Interface (ABI) changes were needed to support APHIS’ metric only requirement. Electronic declaration filers will have to select metric units among the choices that have been programmed.
Non-Metric Declarations Will Have to be Resubmitted on Paper
APHIS sources have previously stated that once enforcement begins on July 1, APHIS will be contacting filers if their Lacey declarations are in non-metric units of measure, and will be asking that the declaration be resubmitted using metric units of measure and quantities.
As the programming for electronic declarations does not support resubmissions or corrections, resubmissions for declarations originally submitted electronically must be on paper.
(Note that the ABI programming that supports electronic Lacey declarations is not fully developed. It does not edit the data, but simply collects what is submitted to pass on to APHIS. There is no tariff number match, nor programming for the submission of corrections or amendments. See ITT’s Online Archives or 02/27/09 news, 09022710, for BP summary.)