Metric Units Now Required on Lacey Act Declarations

(World Trade Interactive)

The Lacey Act amendments of 2008 require the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to collect information on the importation of plant material using a Plant and Plant Product Declaration (form PPQ-505). This information must include the quantity and unit of measure of the imported plant material.

In an effort to create a uniform dataset, APHIS is requiring that plant material quantities be reported on the declaration using standardized metric units (kilograms, meters, square meters, etc.). These values should reflect the actual plant content in the product and not necessarily the product as a whole. While this requirement took effect May 1, APHIS is allowing a two-month grace period (ending July 1) to allow industry to make the needed changes to declaration procedures.

As a result of this change, APHIS will no longer accept counts of items (pieces, boxes, etc.) as valid units of measure on the declaration. APHIS states that item counts do not allow for differences in size or weight between items and do not accurately reflect the actual plant content in a shipment.