On February 28, 2022, filing of PGA USDA Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) Marketing Orders (MO) will become mandatory. This means that importers of avocados, grapefruit, kiwifruit, onions, potatoes, table grapes, field-grown tomatoes, pistachios, dates, hazelnuts (filberts), olives, raisins, and walnuts, regulated under Section 8e of the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 as amended, are required to electronically provide product and load information into the Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system for entry into the United States.  A phased in enforcement period has been ongoing since September 2, 2020.

Beginning on February 28, 2022, ACE will reject any entries if the HTS codes are flagged with AM4 and if there is no corresponding AMS MO PGA message set provided.

An updated AMS CATAIR was posted on January 20, 2022, and lists all changes required. Testing in CERT has been available since December 13, 2021 and these changes were deployed to PROD on January 29, 2022.

For reference you may access the Final Rule at: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-03-06/pdf/2020-03895.pdf and the previous CSMS message announcing the start of the phased in enforcement period: 43661996

For questions regarding the above portion of this message, please send your inquiries to: complianceinfo@usda.gov or 8eImports@usda.gov

Additional related CSMS messages: 50708860