Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on Sept. 4 the following voluntary recalls of imported products:
On Sept. 4 the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:
The Food and Drug Administration issued its weekly Enforcement Report for Sept. 3 that lists the status of recalls and field corrections for food, drugs, biologics, and devices. The report covers both domestic and foreign firms.
On Sept. 4 the Foreign Agricultural Service posted the following GAIN reports:
The Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation announced Special Import Quota #4 for upland cotton that will be established on Sept. 11, allowing importation of 14,741,821 kilograms (67,709 bales) of upland cotton. It will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than Dec. 9, and entered into the U.S. by March 9, 2015. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally-adjusted average rate for the period March through May, the most recent three months for which data are available.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is almost done working through an enforcement backlog and has reduced the investigation timeline by nearly half over the past three years, according to a message to stakeholders from APHIS Administrator Kevin Shea. In 2011, APHIS had about 2,100 open regulatory violation cases, but that number has dropped by 80 percent to about 410. Having worked through the backlog, APHIS’ Investigation and Enforcement Services division is now able to process new cases immediately, reducing the time it takes to investigate and take action on an alleged violation from 632 to 328 days, said Shea.
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board announced its approval of the reorganization under the Alternative Site Framework of FTZ 62 in Brownsville, Texas. The zone will now cover all of Cameron County. Under the Alternative Site Framework reorganization, companies will now be able to request subzone status through the relatively simple "minor boundary modification" process.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is asking for comments on its rules on importation of toothfish, as part of a broader review of its regulations. Under a final rule issued in 2007, toothfish, which are sometimes also called Chilean Sea Bass, must be caught by a boat with a vessel monitoring system as a condition of importation. The rule also exempts shipments of fresh toothfish from the NMFS preapproval process, allows importers of frozen toothfish to submit their CBP entry numbers subsequent to their application for preapproval, and requires electronic catch documents from all toothfish importers. Comments are due Oct. 8.
A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the Commerce Department posted to CBP's website Sept. 4, 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 http://adcvd.cbp.dhs.gov/adcvdweb.
Beginning on Jan. 1, CBP will issue penalties to any vessels that don’t provide two-year port of call data or that visited ports in areas with Asian gypsy moths during the high-risk period and are not pre-certified as free of the pests, said the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Canadian Food Inspection Agency in a joint letter. Vessels arriving from Far East Russia, Japan, Korea and China are already required to be inspected and obtain pre-departure certification from a recognized certification body, and provide the certification to the U.S. or Canadian. All vessels must also provide port of call data for the last two years at least 96 hours prior to arrival in North America. But currently only Canada imposes penalties for violating the requirements.