The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued a final rule, effective May 17, 2012, amending the fruits and vegetables regulations to allow the import into the continental U.S. of pomegranates from Chile, subject to a systems approach.

From April 6 to April 10, 2012, the Foreign Agriculture Service issued the following GAIN reports:

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued emails April 13 & 16, 2012, announcing changes to some Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) electronic manuals. While some changes are minor, other changes may affect the admissibility of the plant products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is requesting comments by June 15, 2012, on its risk analysis and draft phytosanitary measures for the importation into the continental U.S. of fresh strawberry fruit from Egypt, which is currently not allowed. After reviewing the comments, if the overall conclusions of the risk analysis and the Administrator’s determination of risk remain unchanged, APHIS will authorize the importation of fresh strawberry fruit from Egypt into the continental U.S. subject to the requirements specified in the risk management document.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is seeking comments by June 15, 2012, on a proposed rule that would amend the regulations concerning the importation of fruits and vegetables to allow the importation of fresh bananas from the Philippines into the continental U.S.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued a final rule, effective May 16, 2012, amending the fruits and vegetables regulations to allow the importation of fresh pitaya fruit from Central America (i.e., from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) into the continental U.S.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued a final rule, effective May 16, 2012, amending the regulations governing the importation of clementines from Spain by removing from the regulations the number of clementines per consignment intended for export to the U.S. that are required to be sampled by APHIS inspectors. In place of this number, the regulations will say that inspectors will cut and inspect a sample of clementines determined by APHIS.

From April 4 to April 5, 2012, the Foreign Agriculture Service issued the following GAIN reports:

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is requesting comments by about May 14, 2012, on three new information collections that it submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for approval regarding (1) Requirements for Request to Amend 7 CFR Part 319 Import Regulations; (2) Importation of Christmas Cactus and Easter Cactus in Growing Media from the Netherlands and Denmark; and (3) Importation of Peppers from the Republic of Korea.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service reports that the Codex Committee on Nutrition & Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNSFDU) released a report on the review of existing daily vitamin and mineral intake reference values, requested by the 33rd CCNFSDU session (Germany, November 2011), available here. FSIS also reports that the detailed monographs on the food additives and contaminants evaluated at the 74th meeting of the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECSA) are now available here.