The Food Safety and Inspection Service outlined its procedures for determining the equivalence of foreign regulatory systems to U.S. import requirements for meat, poultry, and egg products. If a country’s regulatory system is deemed equivalent, the U.S. allows imports of meat, poultry, and egg products from that country. The equivalency procedure includes annual document reviews, on-site systems audits at least every three years, and port of entry reinspections. FSIS decides how often to conduct on-site audits and port reinspections based on each country’s performance, allowing the agency to target resources on riskier exporters, it said.
Three Seattle-area men, a Chinese man, and two companies from the U.S. and China were indicted Jan. 17 for conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S.-based ConnectZone.com, an electronics distributor, as well as its owner Daniel Oberholtzer, sales manager Warren Lance Wilder, and production manager Edward Vales, 31, are alleged to have sold counterfeit network products bearing the trademark of Cisco Systems through their online store, ICE said. They falsely advertised the knockoffs as genuine and offered them for sale at a much lower price than genuine Cisco products, it alleged.
The Court of International Trade remanded the final results of the final results of the 2009-10 antidumping duty administrative review of pure magnesium from China (A-570-864), because the International Trade Administration improperly rejected a late submission alleging fraud. While the ITA has the power to enforce its deadlines, CIT said, fraud allegations are a special circumstance. CIT also remanded for further consideration the ITA’s selection of three surrogate values, including two on voluntary remand.
A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the International Trade Administration posted to CBP's website Jan. 23, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at addcvd.cbp.gov. (CBP occasionally adds backdated messages without otherwise indicating which message was added. ITT will include a message date in parentheses in such cases.)
The Food and Drug Administration’s new preventative controls and produce safety rules could make life more difficult for foreign small businesses and exporters from less developed countries, and in turn may make U.S. food importers more cautious about their supply chain choices, said industry experts. Small businesses could have trouble meeting some of the new food safety requirements and related costs, they said. And while the European Union and Canada have, or are developing, equivalent food safety systems that may ease compliance, less developed countries lack the resources and regulatory capacity to do so, they said. The result may be more reticence on the part of importers to source food and produce from small businesses and less developed countries.
The World Trade Organization updated its Analytical Index on interpretation and application of the WTO agreements by the Appellate Body, dispute settlement panels, and other WTO bodies. The guide to WTO law contains highlights from tens of thousands of pages of WTO jurisprudence, including panel reports, Appellate Body reports, arbitral decisions and awards, and decisions of committees, councils and other bodies, the WTO said. The contents are organized by WTO agreement. An index also provides a breakdown by subject matter and by WTO member responding to a dispute.
The International Trade Commission voted to begin a Section 337 patent investigation of paper shredders Jan. 22. The investigation, titled “certain paper shredders, certain processes for manufacturing or relating to same, and certain products containing same and certain parts thereof,” was requested by Fellowes, Inc. and its Chinese affiliate on Dec. 20. According to the complaint, paper shredders are being imported from China that infringe Fellowes’ patents and trade secrets. The ITC identified the following as respondents in the investigation:
The International Trade Commission issued a general exclusion order prohibiting entry of patent-infringing LED lighting devices and components, and set bond at 43 percent of entered value during the 60-day period of Presidential review, after finding violations of Section 337 by imports that violate Litepanels’ patents. The infringing products are used in television, broadcast news, and motion picture productions. The ITC also accepted a consent order for respondents Fotodiox and Ikan Corporation.
On Jan. 22 the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:
Food facilities that wish to renew their registration before the Jan. 31 deadline but have lost their Food Facility Registration PIN number must create a new registration by the deadline, said the Food and Drug Administration in an update to its questions and answers on facility registration. The agency no longer has time to process PIN requests before the Jan. 31 deadline for the 2012 registration renewal period, it said. Facilities creating new registrations because of lost PINs shouldn’t lose the compliance or shipping histories from their previous registrations, as long as the new registration has the same information like facility name and address, FDA said.