USDA Instructions on Label Verification for Imported Meat and Poultry

(World Trade Interactive)

The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued Feb. 2 a directive providing instructions to its import inspection personnel on performing label verification procedures when reinspecting imported meat and poultry products. LVPs are conducted to ensure that foreign establishments exporting these products to the U.S. adhere to the labeling requirements in the federal meat and poultry regulations.

Among the instructions provided by this directive are the following.

• Labels must be in English and mechanically printed, stenciled or stamped directly on the shipping container or on a self-adhesive label affixed to the shipping container.

• Shipping containers (e.g., boxes, bags, barrels, crates or other receptacles or coverings that contain fully labeled immediate containers) must be labeled with the name of the country of origin (preceded by “product of”), the establishment number assigned by the foreign meat inspection system and certified to FSIS, a unique shipping mark used to link the product to the foreign health certificate, and any applicable special handling statements. In addition, there must be sufficient space on the main and end panel for the U.S. mark of inspection. (This requirement is not applicable to product from Canada since the U.S. mark of inspection is applied to the health certificate and import application.)

• If shipping containers hold product packaged in immediate containers, those immediate containers must bear all of the mandatory label features, which include the name or a descriptive designation of the product, an ingredients statement (if needed), the foreign establishment number, any needed handling statements, the net quantity of the contents (if needed), the manufacturer’s or distributor’s name and address, any required nutrition labeling, the name of the country of origin (preceded by the words “product of”), and safe handling instructions for raw and partially cooked meat and poultry products that have not undergone further processing that would render them ready-to-eat and are destined for the consuming public.

Read more here.