APHIS and CBP in Talks Regarding Lacey Declaration Metric Requirement
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message on the recently posted Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service notice requiring plant material quantities to be reported on the Lacey Act declaration using standardized metric units (such as kg, m, m2, and m3) effective May 1, 2010.
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(APHIS later granted a grace period for the enforcement of this requirement, until July 1, 2010, to give the trade time to adjust.)
Text of CBP Message
In a message dated May 18, 2010, CBP stated that:
“Recently the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) posted a clarification to its Website stating that beginning May 1, 2010, APHIS is requiring that plant material quantities be reported on the Lacey Act declaration using standardized metric units (such as kg, m, m2, m3).
This change only affects importers using the paper PPQ 505 form, and does not impact any entity filing electronically via ABI. There are no pending programming changes for Lacey Act reporting in ABI.”
APHIS in Talks with CBP, APHIS Says Metric Requirement is Their Call
According to trade and industry sources, APHIS officials are in discussion with CBP regarding this message, as it appears to inform the trade (perhaps in error) that this APHIS requirement only affects those filing paper Lacey Act declarations. APHIS feels that they have the authority to impose a metric only unit of measure requirement, for both paper and electronic declarations, in order to obtain higher quality data.
Trade sources add that meeting the “metric only” unit of measure requirement for the plant portion of imported goods subject to declaration requirements might be quite difficult for the trade, depending on the product, but that no programming changes are likely needed to it, as the PGA CATAIR (Note 1 to the Quantity data element (record identifier PG04 (Input)) lists APHIS’ preferred metric units of measure (such as kg, m, m2, m3) in the group of units of measure and codes for the [electronic] Lacey Act declaration.
(The Participating Government Agencies (PGA) Customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements (CATAIR) chapter contains a PG data set that is designed for two purposes: (1) to begin the development of a universal Participating Government Agency data set; and (2) to allow CBP to meet the data collection [declaration] requirements as determined by the Lacey Act electronically.)
(See ITT’s Online Archives or 05/13/10 news, 10051356, for BP summary of APHIS granting a grace period for the metric requirement.
See ITT’s Online Archives or 05/10/10 news, 10051051, for BP summary of APHIS’ announcement of its May 1 metric unit of measure requirement for the Lacey Act declaration.)
CSMS #10-000124, dated 05/18/10, available at http://apps.cbp.gov/csms/viewmssg.asp?Recid=17907&page=&srch_argv=10-000124&srchtype=all&btype=&sortby=&sby