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Countries wishing to become eligible to export meat or poultry to the United States
must make a formal request by letter to:
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U.S. Department of Agriculture
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Office of International Affairs
1400 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20250-3700
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The evaluation of a country's inspection system to determine eligibility involves
two steps:
- a document review
- an on-site review
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For more information
Contact the FSIS Office of
International Affairs.
Phone: (202) 720-3473
FAX: (202) 690-3856
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The document review is an evaluation of the country's laws, regulations, and other
written information. It focuses on five risk areas: contamination, disease, processing, residues, and compliance
and economic fraud.
Technical experts evaluate the information to assure that critical points in the five
risk areas are addressed satisfactorily with respect to standards, activities, and resource allocations.
If the document review process shows the country's system to be satisfactory, a technical team will
visit the country for an on-site review to evaluate the five risk areas as well as other aspects
of the inspection system including plant facilities and equipment, laboratories, training programs, and in-plant
inspection operations. If FSIS judges the system equivalent to the U.S. inspection system, FSIS promulgates rules
which, when completed, result in the listing of the country in Federal regulations
9CFR 327.2 for meat and
9CFR 381.196 for poultry, as eligible to import into the United States.
Documents related to the Agency's rulemaking activities are published in the
Federal Register and are made available in the
Regulations, Directives & Notices section of the Web site.
The
FSIS Process for Evaluating the Equivalence of Foreign Meat and Poultry Food Regulatory System (Oct 2003, PDF Only)
provides more information on the evaluation process FSIS applies to initially determine and periodically verify whether
foreign meat and poultry food regulatory systems provide food safety protections equivalent to U.S. domestic regulatory programs.
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