USDA Announces Planned Service Maintenance of Propagative Shipment Database Beginning Friday, August 26, 2022

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) electronic system for propagative shipment processing will be offline for routine service maintenance starting August 26, 2022, beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, until Saturday evening, August 27. The service maintenance should minimally impact agricultural clearance activities conducted at U.S. ports of entry. To ensure expedited agricultural clearance of propagative shipments during this time, we recommend the following:

To avoid delays, please contact the USDA plant inspection station that you currently work with regarding propagative shipments requiring clearance on Saturday August 27. This will ensure that all relevant information is available to conduct clearance activities. All shipments will be inspected per normal procedures; however, the document review, sample selection, and cargo release will happen outside of the system and will be processed electronically once the system is back online. All electronic message sets submitted prior to the outage do not require resubmission. Any electronic message sets submitted during the outage will be transmitted to the system once it’s back online.

If you have any questions related to the clearance process on Saturday, August 27, or for other inquiries related to the system, please contact your USDA plant inspection station.  For questions regarding electronic message set issues, please email the APHIS Message Set Help Desk at ACE.ITDS@aphis.usda.gov.