AMS to Adhere to Sept. 19 Implementation Deadline for Organic Products

March 19 had been the deadline for organic importers and exporters to get certified with AMS so the organic import certificates could be generated, as provided by regulations that were revised in January 2023 (see 2301180051) to address issues related to oversight and fraud (see 2403190066).

But USDA extended that time frame to Sept. 19 to accommodate importers and exporters who were still in line in March to be certified (see 2402270052).

“We took a close look at where we were at March 19 of this year and said, you know what? We’re not going to delay this rule. It is fully implemented,” said Jennifer Tucker, deputy administrator of the AMS NOP.

“We’re now coming to the end of that regulatory discretion, which I think is going to provide a lot more clarity and will show ... we’re also serious about protecting this market,” Tucker said. “We have done a lot of discussion with our community and in general, we are very, very confident that folks who had applied for organic certification by that March date have either gotten through the certification process or will soon.”

Those who are still having problems may have not submitted complete packages or they were unresponsive when first contacted by certifiers, she continued.

“There are people who have paid expedited fees to get certified, some before that March deadline, and now some before the September deadline. And so it would be unfair to them to further extend at this point,” Tucker said.

USDA has started enforcement to ensure the proper certification (see 2404160044), with 966 notifications sent to uncertified importers: “Those were educational, but they were also kind of warning you got to get certified or get out of the market. Now we have seen a lot of those just drop out,” Tucker said.

USDA now is the midst of conducting a second round of warnings, with 80 warning notifications delivered and phone calls made to high-volume importers that continue to bring in produce without a valid import certificate.

“We’re making calls to many, many corporate offices to just make sure they even understand what the requirements are and let them know that there are places in their system where they're not compliant. We have some cases where folks are certified but still aren’t using import certificates, and we’re trying to figure out why,” Tucker said.

When Sept. 19 rolls around, certifiers will not be able to generate an NOP import certificate without both a certified importer and an exporter listed in USDA’s organic integrity database. In other words, all organic imports must have an import certificate with a certified exporter and importer.

“What does happen after Sept. 19? We’re calling it the end of regulatory discretion,” Tucker said.

Since the rule went into compliance mode, more than 83,000 import certificates have been issued from USDA’s integrity database. This equals roughly a rate of about 3,700 import certificates a week. Of that, more than 37,500 have been submitted in ACE for use on actual entries, according to Tucker.

USDA also is seeking to reduce the number of HTS flags for organic products, including flags that might raise some confusion, such as those related to aquaculture and fish products. Since January, AMS has eliminated over 800 HTS codes flagged in ACE, with more codes being reviewed for removal later this year and early next year.

The agency is also working on shipment and supply chain traceability in which USDA works with CBP to conduct country and regional assessments where the government takes a focused look at specific commodities in certain geographic regions and countries to see what certifiers are doing in those countries. This includes examining whether there needs to be increased testing or unannounced inspections in a particular area.

“Yield studies are important in helping us understand what is the productive capacity of certain regions. And so if we’re starting to see imports that are way above what a country should be able to produce given the expected yields, that’s a good flag for us,” Tucker said. “That is one of the ways we identified fraud several years ago. It continues to be a tool that we use in a targeted way to tell us what is the range of normal in terms of imports.”

USDA is working with trade partner countries who also have organic certification programs in place: “We support each other's investigative and enforcement efforts as part of our trade arrangements.”