May 2, 2001
Rules and Regulations: U.S.
Mandatory Inspection of Ratites and Squabs
Effective on April 26, 2001: U.S.
establishments slaughtering or processing ratites or squabs
for distribution into commerce as human food will be subject
to mandatory requirements of the Poultry Products Inspection
Act (PPIA), rather than the voluntary poultry inspection
program under section 203 of the Agricultural Marketing
Act of 1946 (AMA).
Ratities are flightless birds,
e.g., ostriches, emus and rheas. Squabs are young pigeons
that have not yet flown.
Before being granted
Federal inspection, an establishment must have written Sanitation
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and a Hazard Analysis
and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan that the establishment
has validated.
Import Inspection
Effective September
2002, the United States will only accept imported ratite
or squab products from countries eligible to export poultry
to the United States. Foreign countries will then be responsible
for certifying individual exporters of ratite and squabs
as eligible to export to the United States. Thailand exports
close to 30 billion baht of poultry products every year.
However, Thailand has not yet been approved to export poultry
to the United States.
Countries, like Thailand,
not eligible to export meat or poultry to the United
States will need to submit a written request to export poultry
to FSIS thought the United States Embassy located in the
country. FSIS will conduct both a document review and an
on-site audit in cooperation with the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS), which is responsible for regulating
the entry of poultry products according to the disease status
of the exporting country, to determine if the country operates
an equivalent poultry inspection system.
Countries' ratite
and squab export inspection system must be found to be equivalent
with the same checks and balances as the U.S. domestic inspection
system by September 2002 in order to be deemed equivalent.
The certification process consists of auditing the country's
federal departments or ministries. Upon completion of the
audit, certification will be granted only to countries whose
checks and balances are equivalent with that of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
under the Department of Health and Human Services. If a
country is granted equivalency, at that time, the country's
inspection service may certify establishments for export
of poultry products, including ratites and squabs, to the
United States.
As with all meat
and poultry imports, shipments of ratites and squabs from
eligible countries must be accompanied with the appropriate
veterinary health certificate and must be presented to FSIS
for import reinspection prior to entry.
Next: Equivalency
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