Banana Imports
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have announced plans to expand the risk-based sampling at ports of entry program for fresh banana and plantain shipments starting the week of March 25. The goals of this program are to reduce inspections on entities importing commodities compliant with current pest and disease regulations and to provide incentives for producers to increase the quality of their goods.
The expanded program will apply to maritime shipments of these commodities from Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. APHIS states that there will be no changes to the required entry paperwork but that it should be filed prior to arrival if possible and include APHIS core message set data to ensure shipments are processed according to program procedures.
Poultry Exports
The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Services reports that in February U.S. exporters regained access to the Colombian poultry market. Colombia had stopped issuing import permits for U.S. poultry, egg, and genetics products in August 2023 due to concerns about highly-pathogenic avian influenza, but FAS and other federal agencies engaged in “months of effort” to persuade Colombia to abide by its related commitments under the bilateral trade promotion agreement. FAS notes that Colombia was the tenth-largest market globally for U.S. poultry before it closed its market, with exports reaching $105 million in 2022.
Catfish Imports
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued March 21 a public health alert for imported frozen Siluriformes (catfish) products that were illegally imported from China and are ineligible for entry into the U.S. FSIS states that these products were not certified for export to the U.S. by the government of China as being produced under equivalent inspection, they do not identify a certified establishment number on their packaging, and they were not presented to FSIS for import reinspection as required. FSIS is working with other agencies to investigate how these products entered the country.
Mexico
FAS recently opened an office in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city and capital of a region home to large agricultural production and processing industries. FAS chief Daniel Whitley said the new office will help “tap new export opportunities in Mexico, our second-largest market.” An FAS press release noted that bilateral trade in agricultural and related products topped $76 billion in 2023, an all-time high.
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